Our 11 copies of Hokusai Manga

The Hokusai Manga are well known, so we did not find it useful at this stage to make our copies available on internet. We only show here specific pages, such as the cover, the pages with advertisements and those that differ from one edition to another (see our page about differences between editions). We might digitize the whole volumes and discuss each page in the future, because we found the books by Forrer somewhat disappointing : he does comment on each individual page, but he does not translate the captions, nor the prefaces.

The 11 copies are presented as thumbnails and in a slideshow. The comments and transliterations of advertisements are given in the slideshow.

The copy of volume 3 with a red cover was acquired between 1907 and 1932 by our maternal grandfather who was a naval officer. The other ten copies were acquired by a maternal great-uncle who lived in Japan between 1903 and 1927.

Each volume should be read from right to left.

Volume 1

First Nagoya edition (Bunka 11 = 1814), with more recent cover

Colophon

Preface

Front cover

Volume 3 black cover

Re-edition of second Edo edition (Bunsei 2 = 1819)
Advertisements for Manga volumes 1 to 10.

Colophon

Advertisements

Frontispiece

Front cover

Volume 3 red cover

Nagoya edition from 1823-1834
Preface of volume 6 (by Shoku Sanjin Bunpotei) instead of the preface by Ota Nanpo.

Advertisements

Frontispiece

Front cover

Volume 4

Nagoya edition from 1819-1834

Advertisements

Front cover

Colophon

Advertisements

Volume 5

Nagoya edition from around 1848

Advertisements

Page 22 verso

Page 2 verso

Frontispiece

Front cover

Colophon and ads

Volume 6

Edition of 1878 by Katano Toshiro.
The colophon states that it is a reprint of the 1816 edition, but the changes in page 25r indicate that it was copied from a later edition. As evidenced by the information given in the links page for the copies of the National Diet Library, this is true for other Meiji era copies by Katano Toshiro.