Author: Okamoto Ippei.
Title: [Shufunotomo - Manga Sugoroku].
Description: Tokyo, Shufunotomosha 1929 (Showa 4). Broadside 64x94cm; colour printed. Rather good. ¶ A splendid large and lively sugoroku issued as a New Year gift by the magazine The Housewife's Friend. The game is an intriguing melange, to me, of the modern and traditional; whether in conflict or harmony or all round mocked I don't know. The winning post - the joyful family of plump plutocrats with both husband and wife looking remarkably like lucky gods - is the dream of the modern young woman being hatched from an egg in the upper right but she is not the starting point of the game. There seems to be several starting points. Did any young western woman ever dream of being rich and fat?Ippei, radical and scallywag, was the king of newspaper cartooning as Rakuten ruled the magazines in Taisho and early Showa Japan. It was Ippei that brought the American comic strip to Japan and he heads, with Rakuten, the lists of idols and inspiration of many modern manga artists.

Keywords: paper games pastimes illustration cartoons manga sugoroku c20th Japan modernism graphic art progress Asia feminism women reform