Author: Hikifuda
Title: [Kakukoku dai i no yuko hoshoraku? Hyakudokukudashi : Wajanyu].
Description: c1900? 40x50cm colour woodcut. ¶ A singular and baffling, to me, handbill or hikifuda for a patent medicine for women that expelled a hundred poisons and cured ailments that any woman was likely to suffer.It's the character in the corner that stumps me. Since I can't read the text I have no idea who he is nor what he is doing. My first guess is that he is threatening to tie the young woman to the railroad tracks but I'm sure this predates any American film serials that could have arrived in Japan. So is he a traditional stage villain or does he do something else in Japan? Surely he isn't one of the many great foreign doctors who guarantee Wajanyu or Heshun Tang, which seems to be a traditional Chinese medicine. But ... he is ordering her and us to pay attention.According to Ernest Clement, in a 1907 article on medical folk-lore in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, in 1896, in Tokyo alone, there were 1401 registered inventors of patent medicines, 5145 vendors, 42,533 quack doctors and 5137 qualified medicos.

Keywords: graphic art advertising Japan modernism quack patent medicine herbalism hikifuda meiji