Japan Described And

First issued in the late 1890s, this is a collaborative survey of Japan written by Japanese scholars and edited for a Western readership. Essays cover early history, creeds and social ranks, festivals and pastimes, and the arts, with additional pieces on painting and taste. The text sits beside a large photographic record of people, crafts, landscapes, and cities at the end of the nineteenth century. The book presents itself as an explanation of institutions and manners rather than as a traveller's diary. It is a documentary portrait of Meiji-era Japan as its own authorities wished foreigners to see it.

Bound in red cloth with gilded and colour design and black slipcase with gilded title. Bound in black cloth with gilded and colour design and red slipcase with gilded title. Chiyogami hand-printed endpapers. All page edges gilded.