Rakuten Zenshu [Complete Works by Rakuten].

£750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Kitazawa Rakuten (1876-1955) was is known as the first professional caricaturists in Japan. He initially studied western-style ( yoga ) painting and Japanese style painting ( Nihonga ) but soon found his vocation in the field of manga , and he is in fact the first to use the term in the modern sense. In the late Meiji period he worked for the English-language magazine ‘Box of Curios’ , before moving on to Jij Shimpo and Tokyo Puck . He was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French government in conjunction with an exhibition in Paris in 1929. By the Taisho period his work had become so popular that Atelier decided to publish a comprehensive overview of the first thirty years of his oeuvre . Seven volumes are arranged according to subjects: 1. Meiji, Taisho Showa Social/Political Manga; 2. Social Customs and Human Nature; 3. Proverbs, Aphorisms, and Senryu Poems; 5. World Diplomacy and War; 6. Mischievous Characters; 7. Bourgeois vs. Proletariat; 9. A Hundred Types of Women: Erotic and Grotesque. According to the publisher’s prospectus, vol. 4 was planned to contain ‘Family Manga’ and vol. 8 ‘Animal Manga’, however they were never published, possibly due to the recession in conjunction with the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The publisher Atelier ran into financial difficulties and had to abandon a number of art-related projects. Only six sets in OCLC.

• Binding: Hardcover

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