立版古 tatebanko

[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

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

[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
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

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, 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)