立版古 tatebanko

[John Wagenseil]

Tatebanko

At last I managed to find a traditional tatebanko for downloading. The files are at the bottom of the page, they are large files.

‘n‹Æ‹�•Û“ñ”N �]ŒË—¿—��u”ª•S‘P�v�F”ª•S‘Pƒy�[ƒp�[ƒNƒ‰ƒtƒg (http://www.yaozen.net/history/history_05.html)

[Vermin_King]

I don't believe I have the shelf space for that ... It does look good though. It would come in handy if you are a gamer doing a Samurai or Ninja setting

[papermodelfan]

This is a most excellent find John. Bravo! I have sent the website to Tony Cole in Tokyo to get his interpretation. I cannot read Japanese at all (except I know that the three symbols at the head of the Thread title mean "tatebanko". Judging from the graphics style, I am thinking from the earlier part of the 19C, and Edo, not like the more garish Osaka Kabuki prints from the post Perry Meiji restoration period that are more common.

[Vermin_King]

Hey, we have found someone more knowledgeable than us on this.

At another forum, there has been a huge interest in Victorian-Era Martial Arts gaming. Some of the tatebanko pieces I have seen would make very nice scenery with props and 'townies'.

Do you know of more sources for this type of work?

[saikaku]

These look like they would make a very nice diorama, although some instructions would help. (Maybe...) looking at a Google translated recipe on another page at the site - Step 3 "Rake in the monkeys come floating as fire, cold water to tighten", definitely something to ponder on.

[Tapcho]

Great find John and it is a big scene this time. Rob, please share Mr. Cole's interpretation on this one. There's a lot happening on this one.

BR Tappi

[John Wagenseil]

I took a look through all of the sheets, Lots of Parts!

This tatebanko would have to be approached as a puzzle, there is small picture that shows what it is supposed to look like, and the characters next to an edge or tab would have to be matched to the characters next to a part. Doable but not all that easy when they are just squiggles to most of us.
I think even most Japanese today might have problems reading the script since it is in an old style most of them would not be acquainted with.
I think the best approach for a builder would be to print up this tatebanko in high contrast black and white as large as possible, go through it and match up all the labels and put a letter or number by them and then use that as a guide for assembling a color print out.

Saikaku: Japanese does not machine translate into English very well, and the reverse also appears to be true. I sent a Japanese paper modeler a message I had machine translated into Japanese, and he wrote back telling me never to do that again to him, and to stick to English.

[papermodelfan]

As for sources of these. There are a few online that are associated with museums. the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has two - both by Hokusai, (the great wood block print artist) Go to mfa.org, and type into the search window <11.19640>, <11.20433>, and <11.20434>. Then there are small number of simple ones that are on Japanese websites. Most are just one or two sheets. Like here: “µ‚ðŠJ‚¯‚Ä‚Ý‚é–² �Ø‘g“”âÄ: ‚ˆ‚‚‚ˆ‚‘ (http://zugai.seesaa.net/article/2136057.html)
This one, with 7 of the large traditional sheets, is large, splendid, and rare.

In a nut shell, they were produced in the 18th and 19th century, depicting historical and mythological scenes, by the same woodblock artists who did the traditional woodblock prints. Then later in the 19th century, as kabuki theater became very popular, tatebanko were issued along with new show productions, showing the dramatic peak. So a lot of them are Kabuki scenes. Then, they just kind of died out, around 1910, and are now almost completely forgotten. Every once and a while one will surface in shops dealing in Japanese woodblock prints.

They were always rare, because they were made to be cut out and glued together. There are a few collectors of them in Japan. Many were lost in the firebombing raids of WW2. I do not know of any source. Every once and a while one will surface in shops dealing in Japanese woodblock prints. Tony Cole, who works in a school in Tokyo, and designs paper models of living creatures, and other paper art, has been a sort of one person fountain of wisdom, interviewing some of the old collectors, haunting the shops, and figuring out how to build them. He and I have so far written two articles on them, which to my knowledge are the only publications in anything other than Japanese. They are also impossibly obscure - one in the German annual publication "History of Card Modelling" and one in the "Painter's Journal", which is devoted to set design. Tony has also held at least two gallery shows of built tatebanko in Tokyo, and shipped two built models to the 2008 IPMC convention - Peter Heesch has the 47 Ronin one, and I have the giant Earth Spider one. They are really hard (and expensive to ship assembled).

I will post here what I learn from Tony about this one. The script is unreadable by modern Japanese, so it takes a specialist in the old calligraphy. Then you have to know the story line, by consulting an encyclopedia of Japanese mythology, history or Kabuki.

Cheers, Rob Tauxe

[Pat_craft]

Many thanks for this link !

I found this one few days ago. The tatebanko is not bad too...;)
(And the sheets are big). This is one of the best I found one the Internet !

•‚�¢ŠGŒŸ�õƒVƒXƒeƒ€ - ‘±�E‘g800 (http://www.dh-jac.net/db/arcnishikie/FMPro?-db=nishikie.fmj&-lay=layout2&-error=search_errorp.htm&f00==%8C%F6%8AJ&-format=results-set800p.htm&f2=arcUP1806&f9=1&f11=1&-max=6&-SortField=f8&-SortField=f7&-SortOrder=descend&-Find)

[Vermin_King]

Another nice one. Thanks

[papermodelfan]

Here is what our colleague Tony Cole reports:

The link to the 7 sheet tatebanko you sent me was very interesting. Our paper model colleague did amazingly well to find it. I had not seen it before. Yaozan is an eatery established in the Edo Period that survives even now. It specializes in Edo Period dishes. The link is the homepage of Yaozan and they offer the model as a gift you can download for free onto A3 paper. They call it an okoshie but it is a kumiage. The display is of the Yaozan establishment in a place called Asakusa Sanya in Tokyo. I've sent the link to a friend who can read the old Japanese script but it is definitely a Tokyo print and it looks like it was done around the time Hokusai did his fight scene so that would make it the early 1800s. The Tokyo prints with the big colorful pictures of how the displays were supposed to look came later. Before that the Tokyo prints looked similar to Osaka prints with the colorless sketch on one of the sheets.

[papermodelfan]

Wow! Pat - another great 6 sheet find. This one also highly architectural. This is the garish colored later Osaka style - the colors got vivid after metallic tinted dyes were introduced in the 1860's. No idea about the topic - but on sheet 1 there is a floating spook, and on sheet 6 I see a giant ogre's head superimposed on a wall panel, so something supernatural. No extra little labels on the main characters (which give the actor's names if it is a Kabuki play), and no running title (which would give the name of the play) so am guessing not Kabuki. Like many prints, it is linked to a season - the blossoming cherry trees mean it is a scene in spring. There is a river and a platform next to it. I will forward to the indefatiguable Tony Cole for interpretation.

A few tips for anyone who wants to try their hand building these.

A) The sheets are the standard size for all woodblock prints: 15 x 9 3/4 inches (need a ledger size printer for the original size)
B) The tabs have unique little characters on them that match with the same little characters at or near where the tabs glue, so you can figure out what goes where.
C) There is usually a drawing of what the finished model looks like - in this case it is on the 5th sheet. Also, on sheet 1, in one corner there is a little sketch of what one of the buildings should look like.
D) There may be moving parts - sometimes doors open, panels rotate, characters may move on a slider from side to side. Cannot tell if that is the case with this one.
E) If you can crack the code, there may be instructions about the size of the cardboard base you need to construct to set it on. These can be large - like three feet by two feet or more. Sometimes they are tilted up a bit so that the back of the scene is higher than the front.

[John Wagenseil]

There is also a spinning wheel, ? a grindstone, two dead bodies, samurai, cortesans or geisha, a ninja or commoner with sword, a dog, lots of bystanders, and of course a rather complex building and backdrops.

If you click on image, then go to bottom of the description page there are links which will take you to thumbnails of the tatebanko and two more block prints which seem have images of the action going on in the tatebanko.

Rob,thanks for the explanations!

[John Wagenseil]

Merci, Pat Craft ,pour le tatebano exotique .

This is the information about the prints:

Publication date: Ansei year (),(Keio-time)
Place of publication: Osaka
Theme such as: "Flow and cutting board set Kyokushin"
The artist was Sadanobu

Here is a link to the prints with catalogue information:

•‚�¢ŠGŒŸ�õƒVƒXƒeƒ€ - ŒŸ�õŒ‹‰Ê‚P (http://www.dh-jac.net/db/arcnishikie/FMPro?-db=nishikie.fmj&-lay=layout2&f00=%3d%8c%f6%8a%4a&f2=arcUP1806&f11=1&-max=30&-Format=results-1p.htm&-max=10&-Find)

The prints have several red demons attacking people.

[John Wagenseil]

The tatebanko PatCraft posted is Yotsuya_Kaidan, a ghost story Kabuki play.

Yotsuya Kaidan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsuya_Kaidan)

[papermodelfan]

Excellent! This is Tony Cole's reading of the second tatebanko, posted by Patrick. Sadanobu was the family name of a prolific line of blockprint artists, who also designed a lot of tatebanko models:

Amazing!
Fortunately the site has all the information in modern Japanese! The six print tatebanko is an Osaka work by Sadanobu but it doesn't say if it was Sadanobu or his son. The son was also called Sadanobu before changing his name to Konobu. The title is "Yotsuya kuwaidan" which was shortened to "Yotsuya Kaidan" or "Ghost story of Yotsuya" Yotsuya Kaidan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsuya_Kaidan)
The work was printed around 1854-1868 (the Ansei and the Keio years of the Japanese calender) and the set is held at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto here in Japan.

[Pat_craft]

Many thanks for all the comments ! I learn many things here !

[John Wagenseil]

I just learned that "tatebanko" are categorized as" Omochae: Japanese Toy Pictures".

ephemera assemblyman: Omochae: Japanese Toy Pictures (http://assemblyman-eph.blogspot.com/2009/06/omochae-japanese-toy-pictures.html)

The link above says that the Japanese had paper theaters which gives some of us another thing to search for.

[Tapcho]

The link that Pat posted offers access to a multitude of other wonderful stuff too. The are pictures of old possibly Kabuki theater set design and settings, costumes and characters etc. Thanks to Rob and Tony for the wealth of new information and John that new 'classification' might open up new findings too. So good that here's a small 'sub-culture' that treasures these old and partly ancient paper art.

You get to the other stuff by pressing the links seen in 'one picture mode' but be careful not to do any hasty moves 'cause it seems that some of the pages that open are in admin mode. I don't know how the link was found and is it actually a 'backdoor' that is accidentally left open - anyways the university's collection of old prints is large and interesting.

Tappi

[Pat_craft]

Here (http://darumamuseum.blogspot.com/2007/01/tatebanko-diorama.html), you will found some other names (or relatives) to tatebankos.
Regularly, I made some research with those words.

One thing interresting : the results are not exactly the same with google.fr than google.co.jp. (and I think with other google too)

[John Wagenseil]

I used the search hints PatCraft posted and found a Japanese seller of Tatebanko reprints.
Here is one from the 47 Ronin story:
?????????????????????? - ?????????Web?? (http://www.toy-toraya.com/toys/post-772.html)

Here is the complete listing of their tatebanko:

???????????: ?????????Web?? (http://www.toy-toraya.com/mt4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=1&tag=%E7%AB%8B%E7%89%88%E5%8F%A4&limit=20)

I have not checked out their payment system to see if it is friendly to non Japanese.

[John Wagenseil]

One reason it is hard to search for tatebanko is that they are also named by words which Google translate as "lantern toys" and "upright kite stands".
Having to learn a lot of different words and circumlocutions for same thing, several different "alphabets" where one character might have different meaning or pronunciation depending on it you are using it according to Chinese meaning or Japanese usage would tend to make written communication rather complex.

Link to Japanese Paper Theater page:

Daruma San in Japan, Japanese Art and Culture (01): Daruma Yobanashi (http://darumasan.blogspot.com/2006/08/daruma-yobanashi.html)

[Pat_craft]

John : Few months ago, I bought 2 tatebankos at Toy-Toraya, but they don't sale outside Japan. Fortunatly, a friend of mine, go to Japan and could bougth them for me.

But I haven't build those tatebankos yet. :mad:

[Pat_craft]

The word "omochae" is also used for tatebankos or relatives.

[Vermin_King]

Patrick, I was revisiting your blog today and I saw this picture
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oO2SSy1CTSc/TlylhBUrjeI/AAAAAAAABRI/6dGdfoNucdw/s1600/IMG_0933bis.jpg

Is this one that you downloaded? Is it available?

[Don Boose]

I remember that one! Pat's famous Tanabata tatebanko.

Nice to see it again.

Don

[Vermin_King]

Thank you for pointing that out. I searched and found!!!

http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/architectural-models/8403-tatebanko-inspired-ichiyosai-toyokuni.html

That was an amazing post. Wish I'd been around to go along for that ride. Thanks, Patrick for that wonderful piece.

[mauther]

Hello, John,

I took the liberty to make a post about this really nice model at my blog, linking for this post and giving the credits to you.
Thank you for this rare model!
Greetings from Brazil!
Mauther

[John Wagenseil]

Many thanks for this link !

I found this one few days ago. The tatebanko is not bad too...;)
(And the sheets are big). This is one of the best I found one the Internet !

•‚�¢ŠGŒŸ�õƒVƒXƒeƒ€ - ‘±�E‘g800 (http://www.dh-jac.net/db/arcnishikie/FMPro?-db=nishikie.fmj&-lay=layout2&-error=search_errorp.htm&f00==%8C%F6%8AJ&-format=results-set800p.htm&f2=arcUP1806&f9=1&f11=1&-max=6&-SortField=f8&-SortField=f7&-SortOrder=descend&-Find)

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M'aidez, s'il vous plait.

Je me fache.

This is a tricky build.

C'est tres difficile.

I built this but was not able to figure out how to do the trap door into hell.

Is there a missing sheet or did I assemble the bleu toit temple incorrectly since I could not find parts for its side or the stairway?

And how does the hut by the stream go together? It seems to have a moving panel which is also beyond me.

I was able to figure out the ghost fruits. Cute!

[Isaac]

This is a most excellent find John. Bravo! I have sent the website to Tony Cole in Tokyo to get his interpretation. I cannot read Japanese at all (except I know that the three symbols at the head of the Thread title mean "tatebanko". Judging from the graphics style, I am thinking from the earlier part of the 19C, and Edo, not like the more garish Osaka Kabuki prints from the post Perry Meiji restoration period that are more common.

Not sure if Tony reads the posts on regular basis

I can call him

Isaac