Unboxing: Japanese Wooden Punches 

These were master designs and not for straight printing. This was from the time when Western metal type printing was introduced to China/Japan and making metal Chinese types finally made practical sense. Metal was more durable and reproduction was easier, if there was an easy way to make them. Thankfully that easy way was found, called electrotype and the process was chemical in nature. When a new design was made for electrotype, the source material for punches were normally wood. Looking at the designs, they are not necessarily the easiest to carve by hand, and in repetition (and I am not certain yet but you probably won't find the same letters repeating). These observations makes me have little doubts that this set (of assorted styles) were indeed masters.

Chinese learned electrotype from Mr. William Gamble in shanghai 美華書館 in 1863 Mr. William Gamble, when he returned to the homeland Philadelphia and stopped at Nagasaki, therefore the Japanese requested him to teach but Gamble could not stay for a long time, so he called his three Chinese students from Shanghai to Japan of Nagasaki. Chinese use moveable and unmoveable wood types to print books for a long time, but not these so big sizes typeface.

@@glgko7638 Gamble and Shozo Motogi established a metal type foundry in Nagasaki, most likely using electrotype. The stuff in this acquisition feature more matured designs and what look like business logos, which suggests they are from a later time when the technique was well established enough to be used in commercial context (the size is 初号 by the way).