19th Century Japanese Drug Advertisments

Kyō maruyama okaruyaki - Lightly baked confection by Kyō maruyama. (late 19th century)


Fukunai dokusō-gan - Internal poison cleansing pills (if taken for a month, cleans various poison sicknesses such as syphilis and gonorrhea). (late 19th century)


Shinyaku Sonota - Divine Medicine and others, with portraits of Jun Matsumoto, Shochu Sato, and Ki Hayashi. (Hashimoto Chikanobu, 1878)


Shōni-yaku-ō Kindoru-san - King of children's drug: Kinder-Puwder (Morikawa Chikashige, 1880)


Rakuzen-dō sanyaku: Hoyō-gan, Chinryūin, Ontsū-gan, Megusuri Seiki-sui - Three drugs from Rakuzendō for low energy, heart-burn, and constipation (Eitaku, late 19th century)


Tsukisarae kokoku; Kaitetsu-gan – monthly cleansing (c 1830)


Yōtetsugan - Iodide iron pill (Hasegawa Sadanobu, mid-late 19th century)


Miruwa kusuri kasumi no hikifuda - Medicine for clear vision. (Utagawa Yoshitsuya, 1862)


Miruwa kusuri kasumi no hikifuda - Medicine for clear vision. (Utagawa Yoshitsuya, 1862)


Benri ohaguro tokiwa no tsuya - Easy to use teeth-blackening oxide, Tokiwa no tsuya means "everlasting luster" and is also the name of the woman pictured (Hasegawa Sadanobu II, late 19th century)


Hikan yakuōen - drug for spleen and liver (1895)


Ichikawa Danjūro kōen Seisei gan - Ichikawa Danjūrō announcing the drug “Seisei gan” (for hangover) (Utagawa Toyokuni III, mid 19th century)

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all images are from San Francisco University's Japanese Woodblock Print Collection [link]
see more at Digital Clendening's Japanese Art on the Subject of Medicine [link]

Japanese Lantern Slides

"In the 1930s, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (a predecessor of the present Japan Foundation) actively created lantern slides and distributed them to institutions around the world to help educate about Japan." Here are a few of my favorite slides...

Heaven




Hell










Sanitation Campaign








Scary Kite


Domestic Dispute


Stories






War Stories


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These slides are from the University of Hawaii at Manoa digital library [link]
see more Japanese lantern slides at Triptych: the tri-college digital library [link]

Hypnotist Posters

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see the Library of Congress' Performing Arts Posters [link]
the amazing Circus Museum [link]
Magic Posters [link]
Raffaele De Ritis' Novelties and Wonders [link]
for even more links see the Cabinet of Links [link]

Omochae: Japanese Toy Pictures

These are (I think) illustrations of everyday images in Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868), and are very likely from the 1974 book Omochae by Tatsugorō Hirose. A search for "Omochae" and a translation of おもちゃ絵　 brings me the term "Toy Pictures" - which might mean toys in art (as the above link suggests) or a type of illustration (?). If anyone can clarify any of this then please let me know.

UPDATE - thank you very much to Michael Pick and his wife for the following clarification on what a Omochae/Toy Picture is: "From what we could gather they were mostly used for teaching/storytelling - there's an example of one in use here for instance which speaks volumes and the text backs up the contents of the illustration. The translation is correct - they were called "toy pictures". Some of them have the names of places and characters, so I assume those would have been used in the telling of stories, historical or otherwise.
I'd be willing to wager that they're related to the similar practice of kamishibai ("paper drama") a simple variant of the magic lantern show/slideshow/proto-cinema/animation. This usually involves/involved the telling of a story with a bunch of illustrated cards. Wikipedia has a little entry on it..."































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The entire collection is at the rare book section of the Japanese National Library [link]