??????. [Sekai sh?y? sugoroku]. [World Travel Sugoroku]

[SHIMOMURA, IZAN]. ????.

Verlag: ???. [Hakubunkan]. Meiji 29 [1896], Tokyo., 1896

Beschreibung

Colour folding sugoroku which has been much used. Paper evenly browned, a few small stains, repaired tears along folds and edges with archival washi, some repairs visible on the image though this are not aggressively obvious. A very interesting and attractive late Meiji sugoroku 61 x 89 cm. Colourful late 19th century sugoroku game featuring a journey round the world, illustrated by artist Shimomura Izan (1865-1949). Each square contains not only an illustration of the destination but also a sentence of information about the historical or geographical significance of the place. Players start from the port of Yokohama and travel first to Hawaii, where, we are told, "30,000 Japanese people live". The journey continues to San Francisco, the Niagara Falls and New York, and then to Mexico and Brazil, and across the Atlantic to Liverpool (represented, for some reason, by a rather charming picture of an English puppeteer). The next stops are London, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and then to Turkey, Italy, Switzerland and Spain (illustrated by a picture of a bull fight). The imaginary travellers then proceed from Marseille to Egypt and through the Suez Canal to India. The illustrations of Singapore and Australia and Luzon which follow indicate that these places were less familiar to the designers of the game. The depiction of Australia looks rather more like something out of the Wild West. The final stage of the game takes the players through Hong Kong and Shanghai to Seoul (Keijo) and Vladivostok back to Japan via Nagasaki. The game ends in a delightfully depicted Tokyo street. An intriguing window onto Meiji era images of the outside world. There is a (probably contemporary) inscription by an earlier owner of the game, based in Akita Prefecture, on the reverse. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 177364

Bibliografische Details

Titel: ??????. [Sekai sh?y? sugoroku]. [World ...

Verlag: ???. [Hakubunkan]. Meiji 29 [1896], Tokyo.

Erscheinungsdatum: 1896