Product Description

Japanese matchbook art of the 1920s and 1930s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1030500 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-25
• Released on: 2004-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 64 pages

Customer Reviews

Delightful intro to Japanese matchbox art
The most commonplace items of the past occasionally become treasured collectibles today. But miniature advertising graphics that adorned Japanese matchboxes were more striking (forgive the pun) than common as one discovers in this delightful introduction to Matchibako by Maggie Kinser Hohle.

The matchbox labels depicted in forty-two full-color plates are from the collection of designer Naomichi Kawahata. The collection itself spans the 1920s and 30s and provides snapshots of a country in transition and internal turmoil, both embracing and decrying modernist influence of industrialist nations.

Above all, the images in this micro gallery had one intent, to advertise anything from sox to sex. These palm held billboards enticed the holder with promises of "modern" life, euro-hairstyles, jazz cafés with sexy moga (modern girls) or pitched the entaku (yen-taxi) delivering fares anywhere in Tokyo for only one yen.

It is said that "good things come in small packages" as does this superb gallery of 42 plates, with one matchbox label to a page, perfectly frames the near-actual sized labels so that each reproduction appear larger than life.

Another highly unique aspect of Matchibako is the accordion page format, which if you were to unfold would stretch over fourteen feet from cover to cover. Hohle's 4.75 x 4.75 inch art book was not meant for the bookshelf, but to be left in plain view to entice closer inspection in the same way the original matchbox labels delivered their messages over seventy years ago.

East Meets West, a Juxtoposition of Worlds in a Matchbox Cover
This tiny little book is a perfect gift for any Japanophile or matchbox collector. Built like an accordian, its pages exhibit gorgeous Japanese matchbox covers from the 20's and 30's, images like I've never seen before, accompanied by explanations chronicalling why the covers are so unique: they were manufactured during a time when Japan was transforming from traditonal to modern, from culturally-singular to Western-influenced. One panel, for example, shows a Japanese girl depicted in a strikingly untraditional manner, not simply because of the flapper haircut she sports or the cigarette hanging from her mouth, but because of the decidedly cubism-influenced illustration style.