It has been half a year since our previous Flea Market 'Matsuri', and staff member Aya Watanabe has again unearthed many interesting prints to add to the selection in this section of our online catalogue.

Are you going to find an 'original' Hokusai-era Great Wave in our selection here? No, of course not. We are not print 'dealers' involved in that kind of market. Simply we keep our eyes open for nicely made prints at reasonable prices and pick them up where we can. Some we keep for our own (small) collection, but most of them go into our Flea Market ...

We hope you will find something here interesting and worth collecting. We have prepared this special page so that you can easily select the one(s) you want, and we have taken a set of high-resolution photographs of these prints to help you choose.

Thank you for your interest!

Dave Bull, Mokuhankan

• The images on this page (which will change when you reload) are just a few highlights of each type; visit the Flea Market catalogue to see everything all at once ...
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• Click images for enlargements. The prints here are of a variety of different dimensions, from hagaki (similar to postcard) up to the large o-ban size. The print titles are linked to pages with information on dimensions, designer, etc. ...

What kind of prints do we have this time around? They fall into a few basic categories:

 

Beauties

No matter what the era, producing prints of beautiful women was always high in the priorities of the publishers. In the days before magazines and movies, the prints served as 'fashion plates', letting women of all social classes learn about the latest trends and clothing styles.

 

Landscape

In a time before the invention of powered vehicles, travel around the country was of course difficult and not something available to most people. But there was huge interest in 'far-off places' and the publishers fed this with a steady stream of landscape designs, both imaginary, and realistic.

 

Nature

The genre known as kacho-ga ('flower-bird' pictures) was another mainstay of the woodblock print world. Frequently incorporating poetic references, and always seasonal ones, such designs closed matched Japanese aesthetic sensibilities.

 

General interest

 

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Mokuhankan Flea Market :
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