Zenzō honcho kokon retsujoden 全像本朝古今列女傳 [Complete Lives of Our Nation's Virtuous Women from Ancient to Modern Times] by KUROSAWA, Sekisai (or Hirotada). 黑澤石齋

181 fine full-page woodcuts. Printed throughout in kanbun. Ten vols. 8vo, orig. semi-stiff blue wrappers (some rubbing), orig. block-printed title slips on upper covers (some slips a little defective), new stitching. Kyoto: Murakami Heirakuji 村上平樂寺, 1668.




First edition, and very rare, of this work on the famous women of Japan. It contains brief lives of 217 celebrated Japanese women, drawn from history and legend, accompanied by 181 full-page woodcuts. It was modeled after the book of Chinese heroines by Liu Xiang (77-6 BCE), the Chinese astronomer, historian, librarian, and bibliographer. Liu Xiang's book served as a standard Confucian textbook for the moral education of women for more than 2000 years.


"An exceedingly interesting work [the present book] on the famous women of Japan was published in 1668. It...is in ten folios, containing on every second or third page a full-page illustration. The early history of Japan from the time of the half-mythical Queen Jingō contains the names of many women who achieved renown as sovereigns, warriors, writers, artists and poets, and these remarkable books are made up of historical sketches and anecdotes regarding them, which the striking wood-engravings illustrate. The set forms an unusually fine example of block-printing in every way, and the pages of text in Chinese characters [kanbun], instead of the usual flowing hirakana, give it a very distinctive appearance."-Louise North Brown, Block Printing & Book Illustrations in Japan (1924), p. 40.


"According to the preface, the author Kurosawa Hirotada was a samurai in the service of the lord of the province of Shinano. He was noted for his filial piety, and was brought up under the influence of his mother, who was a lady of character and refinement. It is said that he wrote this voluminous work as an expression of his devotion to his mother...As the term honchō (our dynasty, or our country) in the title indicates, the lives are all of Japanese women. Many of these lives evidently were taken from purely literary works, and not from strictly historical sources, so they are to be taken merely as stories, and not as historical facts."-Toda Kenji, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (1931), p. 59.


Each volume is devoted to a different category of famous women: empresses, ladies of the nobility, wives of men of high rank (including Lady Murasaki), virtuous women, wives of common people, concubines, courtesans, virgins, miraculous women, and divine women.


These volumes contain 181 fine full-page woodcuts. The British Museum's cataloguing of their set states "the illustrations amount virtually to printed 'Narae'."


Fine set.