Description: stone engraved color lithographs from the illustrated journal Fuzoku Gaho (Illustrated Customs), issue #174. The cover plate mimics a carte de visite photograph with the title, issue number and date of the magazine made to look like a photo studio imprint. There is also the artist’s printed signature “Baison” in the lower right margin. Also included is a double page lithograph illustration from this issue which shows a young girl reading the same magazine (cover). So this is a lithograph of a lithograph. This plate also has Baison’s signature printed into the lower right corner with his red hanko stamp that reads “Okada Baison”.

Date: October 10, 1898 (Meiji year '31)
From: Fuzoku Gaho (Illustrated Customs), issue #174
Publisher: Toyodo, Tokyo, Kanda-ku

Condition:
- Cover plate has some normal binding perforations on the right margin. There are also some minor foxing spots in the center of the plate.
- Double page plate: all four corners have some signs of wear. Since this plate was a double page gatefold illustration within the journal it was purposefully creased in down the center to fold into the magazine.

Baison Okada:

Okada was a painter, magazine and book illustrator and regular contributor to the journal Fuzoku Gaho (Illustrated Customs). This is assumed to be the same Meiji period artist named “Baison” who gained notoriety for his illustrations in the Hasegawa crepe paper book series. This includes; Oyucha San (1890), Kohana San (1890), as well as the Sword and Blossom Poems from Japan, Volumes I-3 by Kimura Shotaro and Charlotte M. Peake (1907).