Dokufu (4 results)

Condition: very good. n.p. n.d (later 19th century). 17x13cm, two parts together; each eight pages; illustrated titles for each. Cheap paper browned; apparently disbound with old stab holes, recently restitched. This particular version of the story of Omatsu, the woman thief and killer of Kasamatsu Pass, exists in at least four different printings. The illustrations were redawn and with the text was recut for each. Since all the copies I've traced were published by Yoshidaya Shokichi it suggests a lot of blocks were worn out printing a lot of copies. I think this a lithographic printing of the last version but it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a poor lithograph and a poor woodcut. Certainly the paper looks like wood pulp. That blank panel, bottom right, has Yoshidaya's name in it on other printings.The story of our dokufu (poisonous woman) is a tangle of contradictions depending on whether it came from song - like this one - kabuki, or rakugo (story telling). However she became a thief, the important bit is that she avenged her father's murder and in turn was killed by her victim's son. The two illustrations make that plain enough. I did come across mention of a version in which her daughter avenged her killing without realising her mother had killed his father. That one has the makings of a long running soap opera.

Condition: very good. Bakurocho (Edo, ie Tokyo), Yoshidaya Shokichi [second quarter of the 19th century?]. 17x13cm, two parts together; each eight pages; illustrated titles for each. This particular version of the story of Omatsu, the woman thief and killer of Kasamatsu Pass, exists in at least four different versions. The illustrations were redrawn and with the text was recut for each. Since all the copies I've traced were published by Yoshidaya Shokichi it suggests a lot of blocks were worn out printing a lot of copies. This one seems early and is labelled a reprint (åæ¿) on the titles; it matches Waseda's copy. The story of our dokufu (poisonous woman) is a tangle of contradictions depending on whether it came from song - like this one - kabuki, or rakugo (story telling). However she became a thief, the important bit is that she avenged her father's murder and in turn was killed by her victim's son. The two illustrations make that plain enough. I did come across mention of a version in which her daughter avenged her killing without realising her mother had killed his father. That one has the makings of a long running soap opera.

Condition: very good. Tokyo 1874 (Meiji 7). 36x24cm colour woodcut by Utagawa Yoshiku. A nice copy. Issue 220 of the special colour supplement to the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun (Tokyo daily news) which captures the villain Mosuke or Mokichi and his Poisonous Wife escaping their captor after they were captured in August 1872; the original article appeared in October 1872 but it took a while to develop the picture. I'm uncertain about our villain's name: he is Mokichi in the text but Mosuke in the banner beside him. Cataloguers usually follow the text. A peasant's wife who cripples herself in the field alongside her husband is a model wife. A clerk's wife who festers at home and cripples her children is a model wife. But let the wife of a vicious thug, who is after all a worker, share in her husband's work . poisonous woman. Thank heaven the world's not like that any more. Dokufu, poisonous women, are for all time but the first few decades of the Meiji, with the advent of western style newspapers, made for rich pickings.

Condition: very good. n.p. n.d. [c 1887?] 19x26cm, contemporary plain wrapper; 41 wood engravings on 21 double folded leaves. A little browning. A prime example of the strange casserole of Meiji Japan. In form, in technique, in content and in production these hold all the paradoxes of Japan embracing western modernisation while hanging fast to tradition. These are the illustrations for what seems a rollicking sword and sash thriller but . it is set in a modern metropolis; bowler hats, suits and dashing mustachios are not out of place, neither is what looks like a railway station. And these are not ukiyo-e woodcuts for a popular novel, these are western wood engravings for a long serial - there are 41 after all - in a newspaper or broadsheet magazine; an illustration of such a paper helpfully holds a bough of blossoms in one illustration. The subject apart, the glaring difference between these and any western illustrations is the skill of artist and engraver, all but a few western counterparts are put to shame. I'm convinced that these relate to Hanai Oume the celebrated Tokyo geisha-teahouse owner who, in 1887, stabbed her employee who, apparently in concert with her father, was trying to muscle her out of the business. The first illustration here shows two men holding umbrellas that, I'm told, advertise a restaurant or 'licenced pleasure quarter' remarkably similar to hers: Suigetsu. The umbrella was part of her claim of self defence: Minekichi attacked her with the knife, she disarmed him with her umbrella and then stabbed him.Oume or O-ume - her professional name - was celebrity manifest, one of the three most famous dokufu (poisonous women) of the Meiji. Her murder trial was public and, though crowds unable to get in became irate, every moment was covered in the press; books were published within minutes, kabuki plays and novels performed and published, and the newspapers made rich. Yoshitoshi produced a famous print of the murder as a supplement for the Yamato Shimbun but while there is plenty of violence in these pictures there is no murder. Spin-off or fanciful concoction, there's a good story here. There is an owner's (maybe artist's?) seal which I make out to be æ¥èæ¢è« - I'm sure I'm wrong.