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.

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[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‚‘
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 !

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[Vermin_King]

Another nice one. Thanks