Search Results: Japan and E Asia from Bernett Rare Books Inc

Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1929-1930 (Showa 4 and 5). Large octavos (29 × 19.6 cm). Publisher's cloth-backed boards with vignette to front board and gilt titles to spine; 381 and 115, 18, [1] pp. The first volume with 350 pp. of plans and drawings, a few in color; the second volume In the original card slipcases with decorative title label affixed to panels. Light wear and scuffing to slipcases; very minor foxing to boards and endpapers; else about very good. Asahi Shimbun is one of the five national newspapers in Japan, and one of the nation's oldest and largest national daily newspapers, which began publication in Osaka in 1879. The newspaper held this competition for small and mid-size houses and villages in 1929, and the submissions ranged widely from distinctly modern and progressive to more traditionally inflected designs. One of the projects was by Kiyoshi Kikkawa, who collaborated on the Aoikan cinema in 1924 with Tomoyoshi Murayama (Tokyo). The competition was also not purely an academic… Read More

Tokyo: Proletarian Artists League, 1930. Square duodecimo (12.2 x 13 cm). Original side-stapled pictorial wrappers; [2], 28 pp. Staples rusted, overall very good condition. The proletarian arts movement in Eastern Asia rose in the wake of the global upheaval prominent from 1917 to 1921. Massive revolutions, strikes, and occupations throughout the United States, Europe, and South America helped bring about a period of major social change and modernism to Japan. "The proletarian arts movement was built by thinkers, activists, artists and writers whose world resembled ours with war, imperialism, uneven economic growth, and culture wars." ("Proletarian Arts in East Asia", Heather Bowen-Struyk, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 5, Issue 4, No. 13, April 2, 2007). The Japanese Proletarian Artists' Federation was formed in 1928. The volume presented here is an original catalogue from the Third Great Exhibition of Proletarian Art. The first two exhibitions were held in 1929 and the fourth and last exhibition… Read More

Printed photograph album commemorating the visit of the Crown Prince to the Karafuto prefecture in the summer of 1925, with preface by Okishima Kamazo and edited by Fujii Shoji, consisting of 20 plates with 73 black and white photographs tracing the Crown Prince's trip including visits to schools, agricultural research stations, naval bases, goverment offices, and mines, as well as his attendance at events staged for the visit, including athletic competitions, youth brigade assemblies, and dances; followed by 77 plates with 163 black and white photographs depicting various exterior and interior views of commercial and residential buildings in Karafuto, including lumber mills, colonial buildings, pig farms, agricultural operations, fisheries, shops, hospitals, hotels, and banks. Some scattered toning and soiling, minor foxing. Oblong 4to. Original silk-covered boards, silk shattered along spine, professionally repaired. Toyohara, Karafuto (Karafuto nichi nichi shinbunsha/Otz Shizuo) 1925. The album and… Read More

Unpaginated auction catalogue, edited by Gyoho Naito and Sukeharu Ario, of some 250 works of traditional Japanese art and craftsmanship, including paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, calligraphy, decorative objects, and other items, from the fine collection put together by Baron Denzaburo Fujita in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each item described in detail, all items shown on plates (some in color). Stout 4to. Illus. wrpps., tie-bound in the Japanese manner. Coming unbound. Tokyo/ Osaka 1934. Fujita was celebrated for his attempt to keep traditional Japanese art in the country during a time when much material was being bought up by Europeans visiting Japan in the early years of the 20th century. The auction was held in both Tokyo and Osaka.

5 volume study and presentation (in English) of the history of Ukiyoye painting and woodblock printmaking, defined in the preface as genre pictures and popular works depicting manners and customs of the time as opposed to classical works, including an altogether 211 pp. text distributed throughout the volumes, 156 fine text illustrations, mostly from line drawings, and 170 superb mounted plates, some in photogravure, but most from exquisitely rendered original woodblock prints done by an array of artists after the original works. Several leaves in the second volume damaged at fore-edge and into the extremities of the sheets; a sharp object pierced the chitsu case. Large folio. Illustrated paper covered boards, elaborately tie-bound in the Japanese manner, housed in damaged chitsu cases (one case lacking). Tokyo (Shimbi Shoin) 1906-1907. One of six hundred sets. A complete set of a spectacular work, marred only by some damage to the contents of the second volume, containing nearly 150 original color… Read More

Various cities: various publishers, circa 1924. Various sizes, mostly octavo 18 to 24 cm high, some fold out to larger sheets. Original printed wrappers and self-wrappers; pagination ranges from single sheets to a 14-pp. catalog. Some light handling wear, chipping, minor soiling, overall very good. An assortment of seven 1920's catalogs and brochures from Japanese safe manufacturers, including the Goto Safe Company, the Okura Safe Company, and the Tokyo Safe Company. The items range from a single sheet with only a table to larger catalogs with images and technical measurements. One brochure includes a photograph of a building on fire and then images of the safe found in the rubble, its contents seemingly unharmed. One catalog includes images of the safes being manufactured, and a brochure for "The Safe-Cabinet" includes images in color. A rare collection of hard-to-find catalogs.

42 pp. compendium of poems by noted figures including Koshiro Onchi, who also designed the book and its layout, accompanied by 8 reproductions of photographs by the noted avant-garde photographer Katsuji Fukuda (1899-1991) mostly showing images of the female nude. 4to. Stiff printed and illustrated wrpps., sl. shaken. Tokyo (Fugaku Honsha) 1947. A rare and important work and a collaborative effort by noted cultural figures in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Onchi was a leading book designer in Japan, responsible for some 1000 titles in his long career, as well as a noted photographer, printmaker, and poet. Fukuda's images, some of which present the female nude as abstraction, offer serenity in the midst of the cultural unease of the time. As of Juen 2015, WorldCat locates only one copy of this work worldwide.