Lit. "red and green books." Also called edoribon ゑどり本 or 絵取本 (colored books) during the Edo period. Early Edo woodblock printed books which were black ink printed and then hand colored in a rather haphazard manner. The main colors used were orange-red *tan 丹 and green, but colors such as blue and yellow ochre were also used. They were produced from circa 1625-1700 for a readership consisting primarily of the wealthy Kyoto merchant class.
Tanrokubon can be thought of as a popular adaptations of *nara-ehon 奈良絵本 (hand-illustrated manuscript editions of popular tales), which flourished from the 16th to the early 18th century. Although tanrokubon included stories similar to those in nara-ehon, they also were used extensively for *kanazōshi 仮名草紙. The illustrations, too, were in the naive nara-ehon style, which originally derived from the brightly colored *yamato-e やまと絵 tradition; however, the block-printed illustrations of tanrokubon were drastically simplified, imitating the gold paint in the nara-ehon, for example, with pale yellow coloring.
Both the drawings and carving of the block were usually rather crude. The method of hand-coloring after printing was also used in early tan-e 丹絵 and the maps of the early Edo period. The illustrators of tanrokubon remain anonymous. They are now admired primarily for their rarity, although it can be said their illustrations have a certain naive but intimate charm.