Posted by Andrew (75.3.67.30) on November 10, 2011 at 09:02:39:
In Reply to: Re: Reading of Date in Publisher Sea posted by Irwin on November 10, 2011 at 04:01:51:
To have the dates left blank, that I have seen in other Meiji prints, it's uncommon, but not really rare.
I think that phenomenon is as you said: that the publisher is preparing a print in advance, but has not decided the exact release date. And then occasionally some batches of prints were made with the dates not filled in.
This set of yours is more puzzling in that a month/day has been specified but no year. There are actually two columns of dates :
Below the date places in the rightmost column it says 印刷, meaning "Date of Printing", and in the second column 発行, meaning "Date of Issue"
Undecided printing date, planned issue date?
Your explanation seems an excellent possibility:
that this set is an advance advertisement in April for the meeting to take place in June, but the date of the event had not been confirmed. And therefore they left open the possibility that the meeting might actually take place in the subsequent year.
Andrew