Cheviotsbooks aka Jason Cullen sell fake signatures in collectable books on eBay. AVOID.

I went and took a look at his auctions and was somewhat surprised to
see a listing for a signed first edition of Harry Potter 3 closed early
because of a supposed error in the listing.
(http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=6982299172)
It's especially noteworthy that the auction was only halted when it
was close to the end and had not received any bids, even at a starting
price of 99 pence, with no reserve. Given the number that are born
every minute, and given that they flock to eBay in droves, it's
pretty remarkable that the seller couldn't even attract one bid at
such a throwaway price.

I noticed an item signed in Japanese and thought I'd take a look at
that. (http://tinyurl.com/bexy7)

Supposedly this is "the exclusive UK gold boxed 2 book signed book
club Special Edition of this amazing collection handsigned by Murakami
[Haruki]."

That's a bit strange in itself. Norwegian Wood is a novel, not a
"collection", and there is nothing particularly "special" about
this book club reprint. It's a bit of a con to call it a "first
edition", as the seller does.

It's also a bit odd that the same books (identical, not just similar)
had previously been sold at auction by this seller.
(http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=6967649898)
In itself it means nothing - just a non-paying bidder, probably - but
I'm beginning to feel the whole thing's a bit iffy, even before
looking at the signature, which is, of course, the crux of the matter.

I can say it is nothing like any Murakami signature I have ever seen,
but that doesn't immediately make it a fake. It's written in an
approximation to a variant script, known as gyousho. Gyousho script is
not often seen, except for personal signatures, and is like a kind of
shorthand of the normal pictograms. I haven't seen a gyousho-style
Murakami singature before, and can't find a specimen anywhere to
compare, so these are just my reactions to what I see in front of me.

Firstly, it just doesn't look like a practised hand. It looks like an
unpractised hand hesitantly making unfamiliar characters, not the
flowing lines of someone who has done it thousands of times before.
Note the way the pen rests on the page at the curves and and the ends
of lines, making them thick and blotchy. A practised hand is most
unlikely to do that, especially in Japan, where people tend to consider
that personality is reflected in one's handwriting. It would be - well
- *surprising* for a famous author to pen such crabbed, scrawly and
inelegant characters.

Taking each character in turn, the first character is pretty rough, but
it could just about be a gyousho reading of the pictogram for
"Mura-". The second one, though, is just a very sloppy rendering of
the regular pictogram for "-kami"; it isn't in the gyousho script
at all!

I've seen a few of these gyousho signatures, but I've never seen
one that mixes gyousho and regular pictograms. Still, there's always
a first time...

The best I can say of the third character is that it's eccentric; a
practiced eye could probably guess that it was "Haru-", but it
doesn't conform to any recognised reading for that character. And the
fourth one's totally obscure. I don't think anyone could look at
that in isolation and see it as "-ki".

So, is it a forgery and, if so, how was it produced?

Personally, I'm very suspicious of it. It *might* have been written by
a tired Murakami, at the end of a long day, but I doubt it. I don't
even think it was done by a Japanese person; it's too eccentric and
badly-written.

But for a non-Japanese to have ended up producing this he or she must
have had a roughly similar model to work from. They could not have
ended up with a signature that looks like gyousho simply by copying the
regular pictograms.

So my conclusion is that this may well have been produced by a forger
unfamiliar with Japanese script attempting to copy a genuine gyousho
signature by Murakami.

Whatever. One thing's sure, though; I'll be giving it a wide berth.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

On 19 Oct 2005 08:21:14 -0700, "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson"
wrote:

Personally, I'm very suspicious of it. It *might* have been written by
a tired Murakami, at the end of a long day,

How do book signings work in Japan ? Brush signature, the ubiquitous
Sharpie, or a personal seal ? I can imagine that even more than Western
authors, Japanese authors doing bookshop tours would let their
signatures slide.

A friend of mine has probably 30 Neil Gaiman signatures on books and
personal correspondence. You'd barely recognise some as being the same
signature, but there's commonality between the "quick" and "slow"
signatures.

Andy Dingley wrote:

How do book signings work in Japan ?

Signatures aren't really my thing, and of the two authors who attract
most attention in the West - Mishima Yukio and Murakami Haruki - the
first is dead and the second (for some reason) doesn't do book-signings
in Japan, so I don't have much reason to go to formal book-signings.

Brush signature, the ubiquitous Sharpie, or a
personal seal ?

Oh, that. Brush would be going too far, and a biro would be a bit too
casual. There's a special kind of pen used for this kind of thing -
kind of like a felt-tip, but not quite. The first printings (at least)
of older books very often carry a personal seal of the author, but a
signed copy would normally require a signature rather than a seal.

I can imagine that even more than Western authors,
Japanese authors doing bookshop tours would let their
signatures slide.

Well, but signing isn't quite the big thing it is in the West. I think
one is generally expected to pay admission, listen to the author give a
talk, and then queue patiently, so admission would be limited to the
size of the venue and one couldn't get inundated by queues of people
stretching round the block.

As I say, people's personality is considered to be reflected in their
handwriting, and a sloppy signature would give a very bad impression of
the author. All the signed works I have seen are stylishly signed with
flowing strokes and a degree of panache. I've never seen a crabbed,
ugly signature like the one on those books in the eBay auction - not
from Murakami, not from anyone.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

Just to follow up on this, I thought I'd get a native Japanese with a
good knowledge of Murakami to take a look at the signature
(http://tinyurl.com/bexy7), so I contacted Yoshio Osakabe, who
maintains an excellent Murakami website
(http://www.geocities.jp/yoshio_osakabe/indexE.html). He had difficulty
accessing the page, so it took a while for him to deliver a verdict,
but I just got this from him:

I am 100% sure the signature is fake. The person
who wrote it is not Japanese nor Chinese, who are
used to writing Chinese characters. This person
imitated the real signature but could not write the
last character correctly.

Basically, he's saying the same as I said, only I trust his judgement
that bit more than I trust my own.

As far as I'm concerned, that's conclusive. Either the seller's a fraud
or he's been hoodwinked himself.

John
http:rarebooksinjapan.com

FOOTNOTE:

I wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, that's conclusive. Either the seller's a
fraud or he's been hoodwinked himself.

I contacted the seller and invited him to comment. He wrote:

do you think they are fake ? I would appreciate any help you
can offer !!!

I assured him that this was not an authentic Murakami signature, and
guess what? He has another set up for auction on eBay!
(http://tinyurl.com/9qt89)

Anyone else got any gripes about any particular eBay sellers at the
moment? It's always good to know who to avoid.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com