Saw this over on Boing Boing and Drawn:

19th Century Japanese toy paintings... pretty cool

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/03/japanese-toy-designs.html

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2007/10/toying-with-japan.html

http://ningyodo.library.pref.osaka.jp/cgi-bin/book_list.cgi?volume=2&number=6&g_id=1

EDIT:Concentrated all the links in one place

thanks for posting these & the link. that octopus puppet on the link is really neat!

Thanks for turning me onto Drawn.

Glad ppl like em! I guess this should be in Vintage Vinyl tho eh?

Extraordinary stuff, thank you for posting the link! It's cool to see that some of them exist to this day in very similar form (e.g. the tops.) The bird-on-wire toys look delicate and very beautiful.

beautiful stuff. It would be great to see vinyl makers in Japan drawing on older traditions like these.

I'm actually surprised that interpretations of yokai (i.e. gegege no kitaro) don't show up more often.

Oh, I'd say that several of the pachi sofubi makers include nods to Japanese history in their toys, perhaps most obviously Katsura-san of RxH. Sorry if that's different from what you'd meant specifically.

Also, in case you didn't know already, Sunguts has been on a real roll with GeGeGe no Kitaro toys lately. EXTREMELY hard to land in the USA, but he's still making them. The most recent ones have been really cool. I'll post some pictures once I have a few more. I like Sunguts' Kitaro toys more than ones I've seen by other companies.

Some of the string puppet toys at the link remind me of some very old European Christmas ornaments in my family's collection. Makes me wonder if they were inspired by Japanese toys ... the similarity is so strong.

I've seen 1 or 2 of those kitaro toys--I'd love to see more. I can definitely see the links in RxH figures. I just went to a great exhibit in Minneapolis (mostly scroll paintings & textiles) so this has been on my mind...

The website can be pretty daunting, but try clicking around: www.sunguts.com

You'll come across some of the Kitaro toys, somewhere in there. Sorry Abe for the "drift."

I wish he'd do some Lone Wolf and Cub figures.

No sweat on the drift I love teh SunGuts
Xoco, do you remember who did the vinyl figure of the old Japanese statues from a billion years ago? It's the guy with Blopus type eyes

I'm pretty sure that guy with the blobpus looking eyes was made by Marmit.

Yeah, Marmit is doing the Jomon era Doguu figures. I pre-ordered mine via K-T (sorry S7, jumped the gun there) what seems like two months ago ... still no word on shipment. I'll have to check up. I don't think anyone has them yet.

I think the Dogu replicas were supposed to come out this month, if I remember correctly.

Thanks akum6n, I don't remember that but I'll be patient. The fact that nobody has them yet tells me that I shouldn't worry. I trust K-T anyway.

Back to an earlier point, it's the cultural richness and sense of lineage that I love so much in kaiju and other Japanese vinyl. Whether it's the incorporation of ancient classical motifs or pop culture from recent decades, it's all good and enriches the figures' resonance. There's something about Japanese ingenuity and quality of execution that appears to have been consistently refined throughout the ages. Because of aesthetic differences it might take awhile for unfamiliar westerners to come to appreciate those aesthetics. I don't mean to condescend (much LOL) but I think this might be why you sometimes see people dismissing kaiju on western toy boards as being "melted wax with sloppy spray paint." It's not just unfamiliarity with Godzilla movies per se. They're perceiving Asian aesthetics without jumping outside of Western perspective. On the other hand, I think these ancient Japanese toys would hold appeal for just about anyone.

hey, I have one of those paper toys hanging above my desk:



He was a flat paper ball that you had to puff up by blowing air into.

All those illustrations are great!