Search Results: Titles starting with J from Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc.

Ten columns per page, 20 characters per column. 71 folding leaves. Two parts in one vol. 8vo (270 x 180 mm.), orig. wrappers stained dark brown with fermented persimmon juice to prevent worming (nevertheless wrappers a little wormed), new stitching. [Japan]: ca. 1600-40. A rare movable type edition, unrecorded by Kawase or Sorimachi and not in WorldCat. The copies at the National Diet Library and Bukkyo University Library are different movable type editions. We learn from the final paragraph on the last leaf that this edition is an exact copy of the Chinese printed edition Zhili (960-1028), was a Chinese monk of the Tiantai tradition. "In 991, he became the abbot of Ganfusi, and four years later he began his residence at the monastery Bao'enyuan on Mt. Siming, whence his toponym...Zhili later found himself at the center of the Shanjia Shanwai or 'Home-Mountain/Off-Mountain' debate that racked the Song-dynasty Tiantai school."-Buswell & Lopez, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, p. 825. This is… Read More

Ten columns per page, 18 characters per column. 49; 55 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo (280 x 198 mm.), orig. brown wrappers (upper cover of Vol. I somewhat soiled, wrappers of Vol. II a little wormed), new stitching. [Japan, perhaps on Mount Hiei: ca. 1600-40]. An extremely rare movable type edition; not in Kawase or Sorimachi. WorldCat locates only a copy, at Kyoto University. Our copy comes from the famous collection of Toshie Obama with his seal at the foot of the first leaf of Vol. I. Chih yun was a disciple of Tiantai Zhiyi (538-97), one of the most influential monks in Chinese Buddhist history and the founder of the Tiantai zong. Zhiyi had studied the Lotus Sutra and in 587 wrote an authoritative commentary on it entitled Fahua Wenju, considered to be one of Zhiyi's three greatest commentaries. The commentary was put into writing by a disciple named Guanding (561-632), in 10 or 20 rolls. Chih yun, about whom little is known, based his own commentaries on Zhiyi's writings. We know that Chin yun… Read More

42; 32 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. semi-stiff wrappers (rubbed), orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers (both labels partly defective), new stitching. Kyoto: Takemura Shinbei, 1698. First edition to be printed in Japan of this collection of Chinese literary texts, with the Preface of Isshiki Tokei (or Maeda Tokei, 1673-1744), the Kyoto Confucian scholar who served the Yamashiro yodo fiefdom lord Noriyuki Ishikawa. The book is printed in kanbun with reading marks. It is rare, with no copy in WorldCat (we did find a copy in the Nagoya Tsurumai Library). The texts are: 1. LI Jiweng 李濟翁 (or Kuangyi 匡乂). Zi xia lu 資暇錄 [Records (or Collection) to Fill One's Spare Time]. Li's given name is often written as Kuangyi 匡乂, and there is no scholarly consensus on which form is correct. Zhang Guye assumes that the correct form is Kuangwen 匡文, which allows him to argue that this Li Kuangwen is the eponymous son of Grand Councilor Li Yijian 李夷簡 (756-822 CE), a… Read More

Ten columns, 20 characters per column. 43 folding leaves. Ten chapters in one vol. Large 8vo, orig. brown wrappers (rather rubbed), new stitching. [Japan]: from the colophon, in trans.: "February 1629." First edition to be printed in Japan of the summary and update of what is probably the first practical manual of meditation in China (Sekiguchi, in trans.); it served as the model for almost all subsequent meditation manuals (Swanson, p. 2). It was "by far the most comprehensive systematization of Buddhist practise to date."-Neal Arvid Donner, The Great Calming and Contemplation of Chih-I. Chapter One: The Synopsis. Translated, Annotated, and with an Introduction (Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia, April 1976), p. 6. This is a very rare wooden movable type book; we find no copy in WorldCat, Kawase, or NIJL. While there is no direct evidence of place of printing, we believe this is a rare example of an Eizan-ban, "editions published at the Enryakuji monastery complex on Mount Hiei outside… Read More

Two black & white illus. [20] pp. 8vo (190 x 140 mm.), orig. pictorial wrappers, stitched as issued. Liege: P. Aelberts, [1973]. A very scarce essay on Ensor (1860-1949), the Belgian painter and printmaker, by the distinguished curator and art historian Huyghe (1906-97); this copy is one of eleven printed on fine Hollande V.G. paper and is signed by the publisher. Two letters (one on the upper wrapper and the other on the title-page) and the tail-piece at end have been hand-colored by the publisher. In excellent condition. We find only one copy in North America.

Several black & white illus. [50] pp. Square 4to, printed wrappers, staple-bound. Bremen: Neues Museum Weserburg, 1995.<br /> <P> One of the most important exhibition catalogues from this series; it contains the most authoritative bibliography of the enigmatic artist's books, multiples, and ephemera. This is one of the regular versions printed (1200 copies), a special edition was made in the format of a portfolio under the title: '"Perfect is my death word: Bücher, Editionen, Ephemera."' Byars (1932-97) had a varied and prodigious output of printed works, this "attempt at a catalogue raisonné," compiled by Bettina Brach, records 186 pieces. Printed in parallel German and English, there are interesting essays by Schraenen (1941-2018), the curator, and Thomas Deecke, one of the foremost experts on Byars.<br /> <P> Near fine copy of an invaluable resource. Volume 13 in the Sammlung… Read More

Many black & white illus. 199 pp. & colophon. 4to, pictorial softcover, title on spine. Hyogo, Japan: Self-published, 1982. The first volume (of three) of an important Japanese compendium of global mail art. AU - known as either Artists' Union or Art Unidentified - was a Japanese artists' organization that coordinated the earliest large-scale exhibitions of mail art in Japan. In 1976, former Gutai member Shimamoto became the head of AU. By 1982, when the first volume was published, the group had hosted a number of mail art exhibitions featuring contributions from practitioners around the world. Japan soon became a hotbed for the Eternal Network, thanks to the efforts of Shimamoto, Ryosuke Cohen, Misao Kumamoto, and many others. In fine condition. With a laid-in postcard, mailed to Carol Stetser, requesting mail art contributions for the next volume.

One full-page woodcut of an ornate Buddhist altar. 58; 62.5 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. blue patterned semi-stiff wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, new stitching. [Kyoto]: [Kōshōdō 向松堂], [1737]. Apparently the first edition of this hagiography of the Pure Land monk Jōden (1690-1731), who was affiliated with Honkaku-ji temple 本覚寺 in Aomori. Jōden worked to spread the Buddhist faith among the common people of northeastern Japan. He might also have travelled to Hokkaido, which in this period was a frontier zone not yet fully integrated into the Japanese polity or culture. Among Jōden's works, as recounted in our book, we find the curing of disease, assisting in difficult births by reciting the name of the Buddha, the fighting of a locust infestation by reciting the Buddha's name one million times, and the saving of victims of a shipwreck through the name of Amitabha Buddha. Hōshū (d. 1738), the author of our book and many others, was also a… Read More

Ten vols. Small 8vo, orig. title slips, orig. stitching. [China]: Liaoyang Wu shi 遼陽吳氏, 1935. First edition of this facsimile collection of philological studies from the Qing period. Wu Ou wrote in his Preface to the series that "I enjoy gathering books and I like philology." The branch of philology represented in this collection is paleography, with several studies centering on the ancient dictionary Shuowen jiezi, "the first dictionary of Chinese characters" and a "tremendous achievement in the history of this non-alphabetical writing system" (Bottéro, "Ancient China," 59). The collection contains previously unpublished material. Notably, regarding the first item in the collection, Wu remarks: Shuowen yi gaoben 說文疑稿本 [Draft of Queries Regarding "Shuowen jiezi"], 12 juan, originally belonging to Mr. Ding's 丁 Hall of Eight Thousand Scrolls (Baqian juan lou 八千卷樓). Toward the end of the Guangxu period (1875-1908), it came into the possession of General Feng 豐 [read:… Read More

Ten vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: no date but [1879]. A comprehensive critical edition of this canonical rhyme book. In late imperial China, there were two kinds of dictionaries: those arranged according to the shape of characters and those arranged according to their pronunciation. Pronunciation-based dictionaries were known as "rhyme books," since the characters were arranged by rhyme rather than initial sound. In the Qing period, the earliest rhyme books to which scholars had access dated from the Song, some five centuries earlier. Regulation of the written language and its testing in exams were two prerogatives of the imperial state, and so the Song government sponsored the compilation of rhyme books that defined the linguistic standard. Unhappy with the rhyme books then in existence, the court in 1037 CE ordered their revision. The result, finished in 1039, received the name Collected Rhymes. By the Qing period, printed editions of the Collected Rhymes were very rare.… Read More

85 folding leaves. Small 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. Shanghai: Kai ming shu dian 開明書店, 1936. First edition of this tabular presentation of aspects of the phonological system in one of the most important Chinese rhyme books. The Collected Rhymes was published in 1037 CE as an official reference. As a rhyme book, it represents one of the main genres of Chinese lexicography, in which characters are arranged according to their pronunciation. The Collected Rhymes followed precedent and divided its lemmata into 206 rhymes. The sound system represented in the book belongs to the historical stage of Middle Chinese, and since about the 17th century, scholars studied these books in order to gain insight into the way in which Middle Chinese had been pronounced. Our book distributes characters from Collected Rhymes into two-dimensional grids. If we are reading the book correctly, it appears that each grid is headed by a Middle Chinese syllabic initial, with the characters listed in it… Read More

65 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. Shanghai: Shang wu yin shu guan 商務印書館, 1937. First edition of this overview of events and publications in the field of oracle-bone studies. The oracle-bone inscriptions are divinatory inscriptions on animal scapulae and turtle plastrons. "Scapulimancy began to emerge in China during the late Yangshao 仰韶 period...The application of northern scapulimancy to the divine turtle shell of the south and east reached its highest point several centuries later during the golden age of oracle-bone divination at Anyang, a period of roughly two centuries that starts in the reign of Wu Ding (ca. 1250-1192 BCE) and continues through the reigns of his eight successors until the fall of the Shang (1046 BCE)" (Wilkinson, Chinese History [2013], 681-82). The oracle-bone inscriptions were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century and they revolutionized the study of the early Chinese script and of early Chinese history overall. Our book sums… Read More

135 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館, 1935. First edition of this bibliography of scholarship on the so-called oracle bones and their script. The oracle-bone inscriptions are divinatory inscriptions on animal scapulae and turtle plastrons. "Scapulimancy began to emerge in China during the late Yangshao 仰韶 period...The application of northern scapulimancy to the divine turtle shell of the south and east reached its highest point several centuries later during the golden age of oracle-bone divination at Anyang, a period of roughly two centuries that starts in the reign of Wu Ding (ca. 1250-1192 BCE) and continues through the reigns of his eight successors until the fall of the Shang (1046 BCE)" (Wilkinson, Chinese History, 681-82). The oracle-bone inscriptions were discovered around the beginning of the 20th century and they revolutionized the study of the early Chinese script and of early Chinese history overall. Our book… Read More

Two vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers (wrappers of of Vol. I a little defective), orig. stitching. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1933. [with]: - Jia gu xue Shang shi bian 甲骨學商史編 [Oracle Bone Studies: Shang History]. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. Two vols. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1935. First editions of two uncommon books on the so-called Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, referring to ancient divinatory inscriptions on animal scapulae and turtle plastrons. "Scapulimancy began to emerge in China during the late Yangshao 仰韶 period (the earliest traces to be discovered so far date from about 4000 BCE)...Then, at sites in Henan and Shandong dating from the early second millennium BCE, turtle plastrons used for hot brand divination begin to be found along with animal bones employed for scapulimancy. The application of northern scapulimancy to the divine turtle shell of the south and east reached its highest point several centuries later during the golden age of… Read More

12 juan in two vols. 109; 112 folding leaves. Small 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: Siyin zhai 四印齋, [1888?]. Pocket-sized edition of this famous collection of lyrics. Lyrics, or ci (tz'u) 詞 poetry, was "one of the major poetic genres in China." The genre "emerged in the T'ang dynasty in response to the popularity of foreign musical tunes newly imported from Central Asia." Lyrics are particularly associated with the literature of the Song dynasty (The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, vol. 1, 846-49). Xin Qiji (1140-1207) was a Song official who fought the invading Jurchens. His lyrics are imbued with "patriotic sentiment" (Jia, Zhonghua guobao tudian, 614). Our book is a "reduced-size" (suo 縮) version, with some emendations, of the edition published by Guangxin Academy 廣信書院 in 1299 (Dade 大德 3). This edition, in turn, was based on the so-called Xinzhou 信州 edition of the Song period. The Guangxin Academy had been founded at Xin's… Read More

31 leaves. Small 8vo, orig. wrappers (a little frayed), orig. stitching. Beijing: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Yenching University, 1936. First edition of this classified list of simplified Chinese characters. The reform of the Chinese writing system was an item high on the agenda for reformist and revolutionary intellectuals in early 20th-century China. As Min Houzhuo 閔侯桌 writes in the Preface to our book, "since the abolishment of the imperial civil service examination system [in 1905], there have been a number of improvements in the area of education, and the advocacy of vernacular Chinese writing and simplified characters are two of the major movements among these improvements." Rong Geng (1894-1983) was a paleographer. In his book, simplified characters are arranged by the number of strokes in ascending order. First the standard form of a character is listed, followed by its simplification. A reader of Chinese will recognize simplifications that later entered official use in the… Read More

158 pages. Small 8vo, orig. semi-stiff wrappers (slightly dampstained). Beijing: Beiping shi yan bao she 北平時報社, 1937. An uncommon work on the life of entertainers in northern China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "The author narrates, in the first person, things he has seen and heard, recording the guild regulations and modes of operation of northern entertainers in the late Qing period and early Republic, the development and transformation of old-style entertainment areas in the big cities of the north, and certain anti-social shady behaviors and methods current in this margin of society. The contents encompass innumerable phenomena and are very rich" (Zheng Xuelai 郑雪来, ed., Ershi shiji Zhongguo xueshu da cidian: yishu xue 20 世纪中国学术大典 艺术学 [2009], p. 717). Yun Youke, "the visitor among the clouds," was a pseudonym for Lian Kuoru 連闊如 (1902-71), a Manchu of the Bordered Yellow Banner. He was a professional storyteller, performing on the radio… Read More

Eight vols. 8vo, orig. blue wrappers, orig. stitching. [Shanghai]: Zhongguo shu dian 中國書店, [1928]. Facsimile reprint of a series of phonological studies by important Qing scholar Jiang Yougao (d. 1851), who wrote numerous studies on various aspects of Chinese historical phonology, a field of study that had developed substantially in the 18th and early 19th centuries. By Jiang's time, it was firmly established that the language of ancient China had been substantially different from that of the Qing period. Jiang's research progressed on this premise, deepening the description of the sound system of ancient Chinese. Yet Jiang also studied so-called "modern sounds" (jin yin 今音), meaning the phonology of the rhyme tables that first emerged in the Song period. The studies included in our book reflect these interests. They cover the Poetry Classic and several of the other Confucian classics, the ancient literary corpus the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭), pre-Qing prose, the four tones in the… Read More

225 folding leaves. Three juan in one vol. 8vo, orig. yellow silk over wrappers, new stitching. . [Japan]: Prefaces dated 1693, but a facsimile edition published in Japan, [1800]. This is a record of paintings and calligraphy by Gao Shiqi 高士奇 (1645-1703), who completed it in the summer of 1693 in the main hall (caotang 草堂 or Herb Hall), of his refurbished old mansion in Pinghu, Zhejiang. Gao, a Zhejiang man of relatively humble origins, had literary talents that earned him a job in the civil bureaucracy in Beijing, where he came to the attention of important figures and subsequently of the Kangxi emperor himself. For several years, Gao was part of the emperor's literary entourage, accompanying him on his travels outside the Great Wall, from which he left several valuable accounts. Embroiled in factional struggles, he was persona non grata at court for a time, during which he wrote this book. The year after it was finished, Gao was summoned back to court to serve as one of Kangxi's personal… Read More

Numerous five-color woodblock illus. Five juan in five vols. Large 8vo, new wrappers, new stitching. [China]: [1782]. The first series of this famous multicolor-printed painting manual. "There has been no other painting manual that has enjoyed wider circulation in China and Japan than the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting...in the past three centuries" (Gillian Yanzhuang Zhang, "Making a Canonical Work: A Cultural History of the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1679-1949," East Asian Publishing and Society 10 [2020]: p. 74). The book is "truly an encyclopedia of Chinese painting" (A. K'ai-ming Ch'iu, "The Chieh Tzu Yüan Hua Chuan (Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual): Early Editions in American Collections," Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 5 [1951]: p. 55). According to one authority, it "is the pioneer of scientific treatises on Chinese painting, and...it is truly a marvelous work in all the thousands of years of Chinese history" (Ch'iu, p. 56, paraphrasing Yü… Read More