January 2023 Issue of the Introduction of Metal Activity and Information Dissemination

The birth of the Ming Dynasty body and its introduction to Yokohama
　In the Mining Dynasty body, the vertical and horizontal drawings are vertical and horizontal, respectively, the vertical drawing is thick, the horizontal drawing is thin, and the horizontal drawing is driven at the beginning of the horizontal drawing, the vertical splash, and the left and right wax. It is a typeface with characteristics. It was born in China in the coming Dynasty. Initially, it was a typeface made for printing based on the square script, which was common as a handwritten character at the time for printing (woodcut). As printing technology evolved from printing to letterplate, printing began to be made of metal for letterplate, and metal active characters of the Ming Dynasty, which describes Chinese, became also made.
　It was China that invented the typeface of the Ming Dynasty body, but it was in Western Europe, where Eastern studies became popular. The technology of printmaking was transmitted to China along with the Christian Asian evangelism, and from China to Nagasaki at the beginning of the Meiji era. The following year, it was reported to Yokohama, and Yokohama began its journey as a major information transmission base in Japan.

Figure 1: "The Lord's Prayer of 150 Languages" printed in France 1805 Hirofumi Komiyayama Collection of Yokohama History Museum　

Special exhibition "Small Giants Supporting Modern Japan"
　Hirofumi Komiyama, a typeface designer and print history researcher, unraveled the world's long history of type printing using materials collected by himself. Recently, Mr. Komiyayama donated the valuable materials collected to the Yokohama Museum of History, and a catalog of "Komiyayama Hiroshi Bunko" was published on the web page of the museum (external site). And this time, the Yokohama Museum of History is holding a special exhibition "Small Giants Supporting Modern Japan" (outside site) utilizing the donated materials. The exhibition is an exhibition of print history that traces the birth of Kanji type revealed by Mr. Komiyama and the journey of introduction to Japan.

Project contents-"The Lord Prayer of 150 Languages", "Meijing Metal Activity", "Domestic Printing Machine", etc.
　The exhibition introduces about 150 materials, one of which is a book published in France in 1805, called "The Prayer of the Lord of 150 Languages". This book, at the order of Napoleon I, took up 150 languages by the French Imperial Printing Office, and printed letters specific to each language, mostly printed using print instead of woodcuts or copper plates. If you look at the part where the kanji type is printed in "The Lord's Prayer of 150 Languages" printed (Fig. 1), you can see that the typeface is Mincho. And the word "country" is falling. This book is the oldest book printed in Ming Dynasty type among the materials introduced at the exhibition.
　In addition, the metallic character of the Ming Dynasty body produced by missionaries for Christianity in China (Fig. 2) produced by a missionary for Christianity in China, and a domestic printing machine (Fig. 3) produced by Hirano letterpress manufacturing, which started typographic printing and print casting in Tokyo, utilizing the technology introduced to Nagasaki.