Japanese Warriors, Rogues and Beauties: Woodblocks from Adventure Stories

New York: Dover Publications, 2010. 1st. Softcover. Very Good/None. 128 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Heroes, villains, and damsels in distress abound in these richly colored, dramatic images from the Japanese equivalent of dime-store novels. These illustrations were selected from woodblock-printed covers and frontispiece illustrations from 64 popular books published in Osaka from 1898 through 1903. They include samurai and strong men, demons and detectives, courtesans, sumo wrestlers, and other vivid characters in scenarios ranging from romantic to grotesquely violent. Printed in the color woodblock method in use since the late eighteenth century, they provide a link between an ancient storytelling tradition and the beginning of mass-published popular literature. Record # 471560