SHINSEN CHU CHIRI SHO: NEW SELECTION MEDIUM ATLAS: A WORLD ATLAS & ASTRONOMY.

Tokyo 1879, Fukui. Yellow stitched wrs., very good, 4 vol. set, no title slip for vol. 3, else clean, bright copies, hand-printed by woodblocks on hand-made mulberry paper,quite bright, white paper, bit of old minor worming, but mended, text solid, 50+40+60+78 double leave pages, 6 copper-etched color folding maps, 40 fine woodcut text illustrations, most are one-half page size. Written in easily read Japanese, with Furigana along side the Kanji, balance of the text in Katakana, for the common people. * Essentially designed under the auspices of the Mombusho or Ministry of Education to enlighten Japanese students at the beginning of the Meiji era. [1867-1912]. This text is a middle-level course and resource on the basics of astronomy followed up with a comprehensive world geograhy. Enhanced by good illustrations, one of which shows the four races of man, other foreign items, including overseas lands, their strange animals and other unusual foreign things, that the Japanese have hitherto not observed. * Since the Shogun forbid its citizens to travel abroad before the Meiji era, almost no Japanese had visited foreign lands, thus there has always been a large gap in that part of their learning. Western science was also a weak area for the Japanese. During the Meiji era, this gap was a major area of focus thus the reason for this and many other books to enlighten the country. * Scans can be sent by email. .