Large-Format Flowers, Volume One (Zōkei Kaben Chō - jō)

The first volume of Zōkei Kaben Chō (Large-Format Flowers, jō), published 15 May 1923 by Yamada Naosaburō of Kyoto, opens Tanigami Kōnan's three-volume flower album with a purple leporello binding and a sequence of twelve double-page color woodblock images. The Rijksmuseum's copy (object number RP-P-2005-623A) preserves the accordion-folded book in its original state, with the title slip in the upper portion of the front cover and the printer-publisher colophon at the back. Each spread opens to reveal a single floral subject rendered against an unmarked washi ground at near life-size scale, a compositional choice that gives the volume its name (kaben means flower petals; the title implies a sculpted or formed album of petals). Kōnan was trained in the Maruyama-Shijō tradition under the Kyoto master Kōno Bairei in the 1890s, and the volume's drawing reflects that lineage: confident outline, restrained internal modeling, and a calligraphic economy of line that contrasts with the dense polychrome of the printed petals. The Yamada workshop pulled the impressions in the saturated, deeply registered colors that distinguished Kyoto kachō-e of the Taishō era, employing both flat ink fields and graduated bokashi washes to suggest petal depth. The volume departs from earlier flower-album publications in its insistence on monumental scale: rather than offering a survey of botanical specimens at notebook size, Kōnan and Yamada present a small number of subjects at the scale of a hanging scroll, anticipating the bookless reissue of the same designs as wall-format prints. The Rijksmuseum acquisition is one of the most complete Kōnan holdings in any European print room.