#O53
1818
Four parts in one volume. Octavo (ca. 22,5x15,5 cm). First Edition. 95 thin two-ply leaves; with six double-page woodblock illustrations. Text and illustrations within single borders (ca. 19x13,5 cm), main text nine vertical lines. Three red ink private library stamps on the first leaf. Original Japanese fukuro toji binding: grey paper cover with a yellow paper title label on the front board (with a Manuscript title); leaves sewn together with a string. Manuscript title additionally on the lower edge and text block. Covers slightly soiled and rubbed, corners slightly bent, occasional worm holes and small tears to leaves and binding, but overall a very good copy.
Interesting account of a journey in the Kanto region, from Edo (Tokyo) to Soma (modern Fukushima prefecture) full of anecdotes about the customs of the areas visited; the illustrations depict sights along the route, including ruins of the Toshima castle (near the Shakujii River), Mount Tsukuba, Kinugawa River, Futoi River, Mitsukaido and Soma towns, several villages (Hanyu, Yokozone, Ichikawa), shrines and temples (Sairin Temole, Sampo temple, and others; special plate shows the interior grounds of the Narita Temple). The last five leaves advertise the other books published by Iseya Tadaemon, as well as a potent sleeping medicine. Overall a fascinating travel in early 19th-century Japan. The ink stamps on the first leaf are of the libraries of a Japanese doctor and poet Ono Shachiku (1872-1913) and philologist, compiler of the English-Japanese dictionaries Saito Hidesaburo (1866-1929).
Oyamada Tomokiyo (1783-1847), a disciple of Murata Harumi (the famous poet and scholar of ancient Japanese literature and culture), was a bibliophile and classical scholar who held a private collection of around 50,000 books. He “used the commercial wealth of his adoptive family and an extensive network of contacts to build up a collection of some 50,000 volumes. <…> he was unusually reflexive about his collection, for he kept a diary recording the growth of his library and the exchanges that facilitated its growth, but he was also hard-headed enough to compile a set of rules for those borrowing from his library” (Kornicki, P. The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Leiden, Boston, Koeln, 1998, p. 389).
