Edo prints


  Design: Totoya Hokkei (1780–1850)  
  Title: Dōchū gafu jō  
  Size: 22.2 x 16.0 cm  
  Posthumous printing from the original woodblocks    
  Photography: Jacques Commandeur
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Dochu gafu jo

Enlargement


Originally commisioned and privately issued around 1830 by a group of poets called the Hanazonoren including their kyōka poems. This is a later public edition without poems - classified by Forrer (1985) as the II-D edition - released in two volumes by publisher Ōhashi Eisaburō on 5 April 1888.

Orange book cover with embossed repeated diamond shaped pattern of the Eirakuya Tōshirō firm.

Title printed in green on a white slip on the book cover:

Character Reading Meaning Translation
       
go five  
ten  
san three Fifty-three
tsugi station stations
       
hoku north  
sai room  
road  
chū throughout Hokusai’s
ga drawing album of pictures
fu book along the highway
       
top Volume 1


Title page on the inside of the front-cover:

Hokkei Dochu gafu title page

Red title in the middle column of the title page:

Character Reading Meaning Translation
       
road  
chū throughout  
ga picture Album of pictures
fu book along the highway


Frontispiece displaying the shop of publisher Eirakuya Tōshirō, the original owner of the woodblocks:

Hokkei Dochu gafu jo frontispiece

The characters on the noren read shosai (書斎, i.e., bookshop), those on the post outside the shop furuhon baibai (古本売買, i.e., second-hand books bought and sold).


The images in the Dōchū gafu can be viewed on the website of the London British Museum here.


References


Provenance: Yagiya Bobongua store

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