Japanese types
Illustrated by Mrs. Yuko Watanabe

A collection of 25 lithographs and copperplate prints bound together in fukurotoji manner, engraved and published by Yuko Watanabe. The front cover is in English, but the colophon repeats and complements this information in Japanese. The size of the album is 22.5x30cm.

A copy of the album is available at the British Museum. The Art Center of Ritsumeikan University gives the title of the album as 大日本 風俗 漫画 (Dai Nippon Fūzoku manga), Images of the customs in Japan. The Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works gives the title simply as 日本 風俗 (Nippon Fūzoku), Customs in Japan, and the publisher as 玄々堂緑山 〈東京〉Gengendō Midoriyama 〈Tōkyō〉.

The artist published a similar collection of 40 lithographs and copperplate prints of "Japanese types", with titles in French, in 1886. The Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works gives the title of this other album as 大日本 帝国 古今風俗寸陰漫稿 (Dai Nippon Teikoku kokon Fūzoku sun'in mankō) Old and new customs in the Empire of Japan. The prints, available at the Ritsumeikan University, are all different from those of the present album. In 1887 Watanabe published an album of copperplate prints entitled 日本かがみ (Nihon Kagami). Since this latter work is not listed in the Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works, it might be identical to the present album. What motivated Watanabe to publish her albums with English or French titles, thus aimed at a Western audience, is probably an album of engravings by Georges-Ferdinand Bigot, entitled Croquis Japonais, published in Tokyo in 1886.

Watanabe Yuko (渡辺幽香 1856-1942) is the daughter of the painter Goseda Hōriū (五姓田芳柳 1827-1892). She studied painting with her father and her brother, the painter Goseda Yoshimatsu, and engraving with Matsuda Ryokuzan of Gengendō; she married Watanabe Bunzaburō, one of her father's pupils. She was an art teacher at a school for girls of the aristocracy.