Author: Magic. Kitensai Shoichi
Title: [Kakkoku Hatsumei : Fushigi No Den].
Description: n.p. n.d. [c1880?]. 17x11cm publisher's colour woodcut wrappers, thread tied; 7 folded leaves including wrappers, b/w illustrations on eleven pages. Well thumbed but most acceptable. ¶ Deservedly thumbed, an appealing little book of mostly western magic tricks that does not teach you, I'm sorry, how to drive a spike through your tongue. Kitensai supposedly learnt western magic in Paris in the early 1870s and brought it back to Japan in the mid to late 1870s; I can't find two writers that agree on dates. The NDL has copies of another work on western conjuring tricks that appeared in the 1880's with Kitensai listed as first contributor to the earliest, 1882, printing but I can't find a record of our book anywhere. I suspect it was produced for sale at his shows.The back wrapper might be purposeful or might have been pinched from a popular kabuki thriller about the battle between good and evil being printed across the workshop.

Keywords: performing arts magic conjuring c19th Japan progress pastimes theatre