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Sold: Cookbook for Robert and Mary Fujioka Mid-Century Industrial Designer

For sale on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/264388678548

Community created cookbook for Fujioka anniversary. Many different recipes with a fairly large number of Japanese American community recipes.

Possible connection via USC Industrial Design school, search for “Alumni with Designs for an Industrial Archive“

Possible connection of Robert Fujioka to the company Design West as founder. Search for “pacific citizen a strong bond continues“. He may have been an internee at Manzanar relocation camp, and went to design school at USC.

Search for “California Design 9 1965 by MR Design” and search for “design west” within it for examples of Design West products.

Design West Incorporated 3669 W. 6th St, Los Angeles – associated with designing classic Samsonite attache case of the 1960s. Search for LA Times article “Design West Plans to Market the Goods It Styles“

From the LA Times article:
So, when Samsonite, then Fujioka’s and Ellsworth’s principal client, offered to make Design West a wholly owned subsidiary with few strings attached, the partners readily accepted.

Over the next several years, Design West created the look of Samsonite’s patio furniture, luggage, brief cases and folding chairs and tables in addition to handling a variety of outside clients.

From the Pacific Citizen article:

He started high school in Chicago, working after hours to support himself. When the group’s sponsor, Mr. Temple, died of a heart attack after their arrival in Chicago, Robert said, I was told that I had to leave the city because I had no sponsor.” He moved to Minneapolis to finish high school, graduating in 1943 while working at night at a foundry shoveling charcoal and later at a granary to support himself. After high school he started college after being told the Navy and Air Force would not let him enlist. A quarter and a half into college, with the war still going on in Europe, he was drafted into the Army, serving two years in the infantry and avoided being deployed to Europe because the war ended.

Fujioka returned to West Los Angeles, living in a boarding house, and attending the University of Southern California on the G.I. Bill majoring in industrial design.

While living in West Los Angeles, Robert Fujioka said he knew of the Yoshiro “Babe” and Shizuko Fujioka family (the “other Robert Fujioka at the reunion) because they lived across the street from the boarding house where he stayed. He met with the “other Fujioka family” while at the reunion.

Robert’s wife, Mary (née Honda), was sent to Manzanar at the beginning of the war when she was 11-1/2 years old, but unlike his brief stay there, she was in the camp from 1942 until August of 1945. They met when her family moved to West Los Angeles when Manzanar closed and according to Robert she walked by his boarding house one day and he called out to her, “What’s your name?” and that, as he said with a grin, “was the being of a beautiful relationship that has lasted through 60 years of marriage.” They have one son whose name is Mark.

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Sold: Polishing the Tea Kettle

Just for the hell of it, I bought some steel wool and started to polish the tea kettle I got several months ago. I set my price pretty high, and it hasn’t sold.

I switched my game to using toothpaste to get a better polish. Here are the results so far.

  • Polished with steel wool.
  • Polished with toothpaste.

I have some other polishing compounds, so I’ll try those as well.

I don’t generally associate Showa retro vintage Japanese alumi tea kettles with shiny finishes, but maybe it’ll sell. The patina on the pot, so far, hasn’t had the appeal that I thought it would.

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Toshiba ER-8 Rice Cooker, Historic 炊飯器

Up for Auction: Toshiba ER-8 Rice Cooker, Historic 炊飯器

The Toshiba ER-8 is a larger version of the ER-4, the original rice cooker to gain widespread acceptance in the Japanese market.

The main difference from the later style is that there’s an outer pot and an inner pot, and the timing was controlled by adding water between the two pots. The water would boil, and the heat and steam would cook the food.

This design is no longer sold by Toshiba, but Taiwanese industrial Tatung has a copycat cooker that is still in production and can be purchased new for around $130.

I have listed mine for sale in the 300s, but others are selling these at much lower prices.

These are opportunities to buy historic products at low prices. It appears that, after the ER series, the product was given “RC”, which continues to the present day.

The early models employed the pot-within-a-pot style, rather than the single pot used in current cookers.

A sale concluded in January 2020, a Toshiba RC-10H, for 39.95 + free shipping.

Seller ebernardo98 has two for sale:

Toshiba RC-10H New in original box.

Toshiba RC-10B in original box.

Seller vquillen18 is selling a vintage Toshiba RC-4B.

The RC-180D may also be a pot-within-a-pot style cooker, but it’s hard to be certain.

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Tokyo XmaS Music Box, Christmas Music Cassette Tape

In Japan, there’s an small genre of music where pop songs are rendered as “music box” music. The familiar song is arranged and played in a music box – or, more likely, a synth programmed with music box sounds.

Have you wanted to hear a music box version of John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas”?

What about Band Aid’s “Do they know it’s Christmas”?

What about the Japanese hit “Merry Xmas in Summer”?

What about “Christmas Eve” by Tatsuro Yamashita?

Here you go.

You can buy the complete tape on Ebay, at the link below.

Buy on Ebay: Tokyo XmaS Music Box Christmas Music Cassette Tape

You can also contact me directly and I’ll sell it for a little bit less.

If you like this kind of music, search for #r3musicbox on Youtube.

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A 35mm Lens on a APS-C Camera

When I bought my camera, it came with a 28-80mm lens. In use, it behaved like a 42-122mm because the camera didn’t use 35mm film in it: it had a smaller APS-C digital sensor. This article briefly describes what is happening, and how to read the names and number on some Nikon lenses.

The lens I got with the camera was a “Nikon AF NIKKOR 28-80mm 1:3.3-5.6 G”. It’s described in detail at Ken Rockwell, and that’s where I found out it behaves like a 42-122mm lens on my camera. The name is a mouthful, so I’ll detail the parts here:

  • Nikon – the brand
  • AF – “autofocus” and “F” mount. The F type mount is the most common for Nikon.
  • Nikkor is Nikon’s lens brand.
  • 28-80mm means the lens will have a focal length ranging from 28mm to 80mm. This means it goes from a “wide” angle of view at 28mm to a zoomed-in angle or view at 80mm.
  • 1:3.3-5.6 means that the maximum aperture is 3.3 at the 28mm position, and 5.6 at the 80mm position.
  • G – means “no aperture ring”.

One thing missing from the name is “DX”, which indicates that it’s part of the “DX” line of lenses, for digital SLRs with the “DX” sensor, which is a smaller “APS-C” sensor.

Sensor Sizes: 35mm or APS-C

The Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera emerged in the late 1950s, and became the standard professional camera for journalists through the 1960s to the early 2000s, when digital took over.

These cameras used 35mm film. The dimensions of a frame are 36mm x 24mm.

In the 1990s, a new format, Advanced Photo System, was introduced. This was a smaller roll of film, and enabled a smaller camera. The film supported different cropping formats, and one was APS-C, which covered an area of approximately 25mm x 16mm.

APS-C was adopted by the major camera makers as the new standard size sensor for prosumer digital SLRs.

Since then, the market for DSLRs has been divided into “full frame” or “APS-C“. Full frame means the sensor is the same size as 35mm film. More recently, a new format, “four thirds”, which is even smaller, has further split up the market.

Due to the increased splits in the market, the lens buyer must exercise increased vigilance to make sure that they’re not only picking the right mount, but the right product line for their sensor.

The Effect of a Smaller Sensor Size with a 35mm Lens

The picture above shows two “cameras”, the one on the left with a full frame sensor and the one on the right with a smaller sensor, like the APS-C.

If you use the same lens on both cameras, the smaller sensor will capture only the middle part of the image.

It’s as if the lens now has a narrower angle of view.

Because the convention is to describe the angle of view in terms of focal length, the focal length changes; the effect is to increase the focal length.

So the 28-80mm lens for a 35mm sensor acts like a 42-122mm lens for an APS-C sensor.


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Japan, Islands of the Rising Sun, by Jane Werner Watson – A Deceptive History for Children

I found this library book at the thrift store, and bought it because it was 昭和レトロ Showa Retro USA. Published in 1968, this childrens book, written for elementary school readers, explained the daily life of people in Japan, described some of the traditional culture, described modernization, and covered some parts of history.

The history presented in this book, however, was deceptive.

Remember, this was 1968, during the Cold War, and Japan had been integrated into the US sphere of influence, and had (and has) military bases to threaten China.

The first thing that stood out for me was the story about the rebuilding of Tokyo after WW2, which was necessary after the massive US firebombing campaign which destroyed Tokyo. This incident wasn’t mentioned, directly, though the rebuilding was.

What did they have to say about the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Fortunately, the book provided an index, so I could quickly find all the references to the two cities, and see if the facts about the bombings were also minimized.

Interesting. There’s no entry for Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  There is an entry for Nagasaki under “Cities”, and refers to page 77. The page is part of a section about trade history and how Japan was closed off to foreign trade.

So, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not mentioned. These were the first, and only, uses of the atomic bomb, a significant event in world history, but it was completely omitted from this history of Japan, and also of the United States, in this book.

What about this book’s treatment of World War II? It turns out that there is a section that includes WW2. Given that it was the primary military conflict that defined the relationship between the two countries, and led to the US takeover of Japan, and the inclusion of Japan in the US sphere of influence, there must be something.

There’s approximately one page that covers the Empire of Japan, Japanese imperialism and colonization, World War II, Occupied Japan, and the reconstruction of Japan. It’s the period, not the facts that are described: of all those terms, only “World War II” is used.

US imperialist and trade interests in the South Pacific, as well as China’s participation in the war, are completely left out — but that’s still left out of history, so what can you expect.

Compare the fact that three pages were used to describe the period from 1542 to 1615, which might be called a period of Portugese attempts at religious imperialism, while Japanese imperialism and US imperialism and World War II merited only a single page.

Though this was a childrens book, and you cannot get into too much complexity with them, what amounts to the complete omission of World War II makes me wonder what’s going on here. There are different ways to critique this work, but I haven’t put in the mental energy to do so. You’re on your own.

This deceptive distortion of history is available for sale on Ebay or directly from me.

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Depression and Postwar California Pottery

Thrifting and seeking in the Los Angeles area hasn’t been that great for glassware and ceramics, at least the well known kinds that show up online. Chicago, all of Ohio, and some areas of the East Coast seem to turn up great examples of cut glass, blown glass, ceramics, and lamps.

That’s largely due to the fact that the Los Angeles area didn’t get huge until the 1930s, and didn’t have many local potteries and glassworks. Then, in the postwar era, with imports restricted, the Los Angeles area, and some other areas, flourished, and there were hundreds of potteries.

Consequently, I find a lot of California pottery from the postwar era, and a little bit from the Depression era. So far, I’ve found Bauer, Metlox, Coors, Gladding McBean (Franciscan and Catalina), Maddux, and Weil.

I haven’t kept track of tile, but there’s a lot out there. You can find some of the well known items like Batchelder at some antique stores.

The heyday of California potteries ended in the 1960s, when relaxed import restrictions were lifted, and imports from Japan increased. US companies couldn’t compete with the less expensive imports.  I also find a lot of china from this period, often branded with companies from the Los Angeles area, but manufactured in Japan. This is the stuff I grew up with, and am most familiar with.

Memories? Not Really

So, going backward in time to the 1940s and 1950s, is new to me. I have had some plates from that era, but not that many. We did use some, but, again, not that many. My mother was buying her stuff from the 1970s and onward, so, it was mostly imports like Mikasa.

Most of my current research about California pottery is studying the Kovels book about Depression Glass and American Dinnerware.

Being On the Lookout

I’m not starting to try and spot a few kilns that are local to me. First is Vernon Pottery, which would be maybe a mile or two from where I live.

Second is Pacific Pottery, which operated in Los Nietos, now a part of Whittier, and also had a plant in Lincoln Heights on Ave 26, which three blocks from a Goodwill, and the St. Vincents I frequent.  (The old plant was at the corner they call Ave 26 tacos.)

Both are prewar kilns, so their stuff isn’t plentiful today. I suspect the people who owned it all died, and their plates were in the thrift shops by the 1990s. I bet they are in antique shops.

Lead Risks?

I don’t buy much of the pottery, because it’s chipped. That harms the resale value. There’s plenty I’d like to buy, even with chips, but I wouldn’t be able to use them, because the glazes may contain lead or other harmful metals.

See Also

Colorware at the Maximalist – an excellent history.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-13/marketplace/sns-201406051730–tms–smartclctnda-a20140613-20140613_1_china-plates-pattern

https://putnamandspeedwell.com/category/ohio-river-pottery/

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Sanyo DRW1000 DVD Recorder with VCR – setting up to digitize home video, and revisiting formats

I picked one of these up because it was at the thrift shop, and I have some videotapes I wanted to convert to a digital format.  DVD recording seemed a lot easier, and cheaper, than using a video digitizer on the computer.

Continue reading Sanyo DRW1000 DVD Recorder with VCR – setting up to digitize home video, and revisiting formats