Search Results: Japan and E Asia from Bernett Penka Rare Books LLC

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

6 vols., with approx. 390 superb plates (30 in color, the others in photogravure on fine paper) accompanied by interleaved commentary on the objects, documenting the major collection of mostly Japanese, with some Chinese, art including paintings, lacquerwork, sculpture, ceramics, etc. Large folio. Silk-covered boards, elaborately tie-bound in the Japanese manner, each volume housed in chitsu case (most cases rubbed and chipped). Tokyo (Kokkasha) 1914. A complete set of the catalogue of a major collection put together at the turn of the 20th century; Choshunkaku is the name of the private museum established by Kawasaki Shozo, the founder of the Kawasaki Shipyard Company in Tokyo and Kobe who attained great wealth at the end of the 19th century. His adopted son, Kawasaki Yoshitaro, who is primarily responsible for compiling the present work, had to sell the collection in the 1930's. Notable for its plethora of masterpieces, some of which have appeared on the market in recent years, the catalogue remains… 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

Tokyo: Rokubunkan, 1932. Octavo (19.6 × 17.8 cm). Publisher's embossed beige cloth with black title to spine and board; 707 pp. of text, including four folding plates. With 156 illustrations, including reproductions of photographs on better stock and plans, views, and diagrams, as well as illustrations in the text. In the original printed slipcase. Very good. A monumental work on architectural theory jointly edited by Takao Itagaki and Sutemi Horiguchi. Itagaki is considered the foremost proponent of modernism in pre-war Japan. He had "studied in Europe and been exposed to German visual sensibility, particularly the New Objectivity movement led by Franz Roh. After returning to Japan, Itagaki began publishing essays promoting an art of mechanical civilization in all genres of expression" (Joe Takeba, The History of Japanese Photography, p. 146). He issued the seminal Japanese anthology of modernist architecture, art, design, and its precursors (Kikai to Geijutsu to no Koryu, 1929; together with the… 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

Tokyo: Jonan Shoin, 1944. Quarto (29.5 x 21.3 cm). Stamped cloth, with accompanying printed cardboard slipcase; 114 pp. Some browning to flyleaves, light toning to slipcase, overall very good. Tachū Naitō (1886-1970) was a Japanese architect, engineer, and professor. He was a pioneer in earthquake-proof design and built many broadcasting and observation towers, including the Tokyo Tower. He also engineered the Industrial Bank of Japan's main office and worked on the Kabuki-za and Okuma auditorium. In 1941 he was named chair of the Architectural Institute of Japan, in 1954 became a member of the Science Council of Japan, in 1960 a member of the Japan Academy, and in 1964 was awarded a second-class Order of the Rising Sun. This volume is comprised almost entirely of photographs and plans of Naitō's pre-World War II architectural works. Primarily black-and-white, there is one double-page colored plate and two small tipped-in color plates. The architectural styles range from traditional Japanese… Read More

Unpaginated (6) pp. title and introductory matter, including list of exhibited works, accompanying 57 plates (3 in superb color) showing excellent photographs of dramatic Noh masks, most from the collections of private individuals (mainly patriarchs of Noh acting families) and a few held by National museums. Folio. Paper-covered boards, tie-bound, covers sl. rubbed, housed in later cloth case (worn). Kyoto (Onshi Kyoto Hakubutsukan) 1933. A superbly printed work, published shortly after a major exhibition at the Kyoto Imperial Museum in 1930.

St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1913. Large octavo (27.5 × 19 cm). Original printed wrappers; [2], 51 pp., VII leaves of phototype reproductions. About very good; a few small nicks; wrappers foxed; in protective calque. Illustrated essay on various coins in use prior to the Japanese currency reform of 1871, which unified the wide variety of coins and denominations, adopted new currency units based on the decimal system, and led to the use of Western technology for minting new coins. The work is based on a collection of Japanese coins at the Russian Imperial Hermitage, which began with a gift of gold and silver coins to Alexander III in 1882, along with a catalog of the included coins. The author, Vasilii M. Alekseev (1881-1951) was a leading Soviet sinologist and numismatist. As of June 2023, KVK, OCLC show two copies in North America, at Harvard and Texas A&M.

First edition thus. Paperback. Paris: 1928. Octavo (23 cm). Original decorative yellow card wrappers (unattributed); 44 pp. With one black-and-white photograph depicting a scene in the play's first performance. Wrappers slightly dust-soiled; small chips along overlapping edges; text very good. First and only Russian translation of this play by Japanese writer Kido Okamoto (1872-1939). The volume is dedicated to Firmin Gemier, a French actor who instituted the Universal Theatrical Society in 1925 and propagated world peace through international cultural collaboration. In 1927, the First International Theatre Congress was held in Paris; representatives of 16 countries participated. The Japanese delegation performed the present play by Okamoto, with Gemier in the lead role. With prefaces by Pavel German, a Russian emigre poet, and S. Ikonnikov, the translator. One of 400 copies (this copy unnumbered). OCLC shows five copies (at NYPL, UNC Chapel Hill, Ohio, Hawaii, and Yale). Savine 05514.

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.