Author: Nakazawa Hiromitsu, Kobayashi Shokichi & Okano Sakae.
Title: [Toyo Mirai Sugoroku].
Description: Tokyo, Hakubunkan 1907 (Meiji 40). Colour printed broadside, 55x78cm. Minor flaws and signs of use, some ink splodges on the back. ¶ A view, or a panoply of views, of a future Asia. Some of these vignettes of what's to come are obvious enough - schoolgirls at rifle drill and sumo wrestlers in striped bathers - but a few seem fairly recondite to me. I'm not sure how much is optimistic, how much is dire warning and how much is wearily stoic. Nakazawa, Kobayashi and Okano, still young, had been fellow students at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborated on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko, issued over several years.

Keywords: paper games pastimes illustration cartoons manga sugoroku c20th Japan modernism graphic Asia progress utopia reform meiji