[Ephemera - Candy wrappers お菓子]

[Collection of 560 candy wrappers, labels, and 55 decorated boxes, early 20th Century]

Item #89757

[Ephemera - Candy wrappers お菓子]

[Collection of 560 candy wrappers, labels, and 55 decorated boxes, early 20th Century]

Japan

The wrappers and labels range from small (2.5 x 3 cm) to large (32 x 45 cm), although the majority are somewhere in the middle. The boxes have been carefully compressed and, along with the wrappers and labels, are mounted onto 291 loose leaves of light brown paper, 30 x 22.5 cm, to one side only.

Many are elegantly printed woodblocks employing traditional Japanese botanical motifs, while others combine traditional and contemporary design elements with contemporary methods of printing. Printed in clear and saturated colors, with occasional flashes of metallic ink, the wrappers, labels and boxes in this collection entice and charm.

These are not just candy wrappers as we know them today - packaging to entice buyers that is barely glanced at and quickly thrown away. These are paper boxes and labels that are gift wrapping - souvenirs from areas of Japan that represent a regional crop or product, such as grapes from Yamanashi prefecture used to make jelly candy.

Besides advertising the expected fruit flavored sweets, such as orange, lemon, cherry, grape, and apple, other tastes on offer are chestnut, walnut, honey, lychee, and even parsnip and wasabi. Wrappers feature colorful illustrations of the fruit or nut - fig, persimmon, pineapple - used to make the sweet. Others recreate a landscape or flower that evokes the atmosphere of the region. Most seem to be made using traditional ingredients, such as anko 餡子, which is made from a red bean, azuki or adzuki, 小豆 “small bean.” “Freppe フレップ,” lit. “red thing,” a word rarely used in current day Japan, is the Ainu word for Lingonberries or cowberries. In Japanese it is kokemomo 苔桃, which is why there are illustrations of red berries with green leaves on the Freppe Yōkan フレップ 羊羹 wrappers. These are souvenirs from Sakhalin Island, known in Japan as Karafuto 樺太, located north of the Japanese island Hokkaido, and where indigineous Ainu people occupied the southern part.

Collected from small candy makers and larger firms located all over Japan, as well as local shops and department stores, such as Matsuzakaya Dept. Store 松坂屋 in Kōfu 甲府. A wrapper for Sakura Shop’s Persimmon Red Bean Jellies (Sakuraya no Kokera Yōkan 櫻屋の柿羊羹) from Hiroshima 廣島 evokes a peaceful fall day, with Japanese maple leaves, deer and the Torii Shinto shrine gate at Miyajima immersed in water, rendered in deep brown and navy. Across the top is a line of text announcing it as a prize winner at the 8th National Confectionery Show Daihachikai Zenkokugashi Amedai Hinpyōkai 第8回全国菓子飴大品評会 (held in Showa 6, 1931).

Other themes are not as lyrical. An illustration of the Emperor above one of the Battleship Mikasa 三笠 adorns the wrapper for Mikasa Yōkan 三笠羊羹, a product of the Yokosuka 横須賀 naval district. The Mikasa was launched in 1900 and participated in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5 and is the last remaining pre-dreadnought battleship in the world. A second wrapper features a design of flying planes, with the third character in the name replaced by the shape of a plane and the candy is called Hikōki Yōkan 飛行機羊羹 [Airplane Jellies]. A label that features a worker against the backdrop of a factory with gear shapes around him is selling Kōsei Yōkan 更生羊羹 [Reform Jellies.]

A collection assembled almost certainly before the war with some wrappers going back to the early 20th century; mostly from the teens, twenties and the thirties. Although chocolate bars have been sold in Japan since the nineteen teens, these wrappers hail from a time before the takeover of chocolate and the wave of advertising that ramped up in intensity in Japan in the 1950s during a period that has been known as the “chocolate wars.” Yōkan 羊羹 as a souvenir began in the Meiji era (1868-1912), when progress in manufacturing and packaging allowed for a long, stable shelf life of the confectionary, and development of transportation increased tourism to regions across Japan. Later, in 1937, further progress in packaging allowed yōkan to be sent abroad to Imperial troops, which may have been the final destination intended for at least some of the Battleship Mikasa yōkan.

A few of the labels and wrappers show some foxing and/or discoloration but are mostly clean. Two of the designs even have the original cellophane wrapper that accompanied each. A wrapper for Coffee Yōkan features a slit in the middle that holds toothpicks in a plastic wrapper. Very unusual and interesting ephemera.

Price: $2,400.00