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TAKAHAMA Kyoshi, editor : SASHIE

TAKAHAMA Kyoshi, editor. SASHIE. Tokyo, Kokado, Meiji 44 [1911]. This is a "saihan" printed a few days after the first impression. Bound Western style in illustrated boards, 8vo., 421+pp. This wonderful book takes its title [ILLUSTRATION] very seriously. It has crammed from beginning to end with illustrations, both color and b+w, printed with machine-based techniques but with a freshness and appealing naivete that the HOTOTOGISU artists were famous for. The full complement of the most important members of the literary and artistic group that first gathered around Masaoka Shiki. After Shiki's premature death the brilliant poet Takahama Kyoshi and academic and author Natsume Soseki became the leaders of the group. Such wonderful and established artists as Asai Chu and Nakamura Fusetsu, along with younger artists, Hashiguchi Goyo, Tsuda Seifu, etc., were also allied by sympathy and friendship with the group. Here they have put together a wonderful compilation of their "style" in illustration. The integration of text and image is, of course, traditional and was an essential part of the HOTOTOGISU ethos. There also was an acknowledgement of an adaptation of the traditionalthe bunjin ideal of the educated polymath, who could participate in a cultural continuity by his skill with the brush: be it in painting or calligraphy or poetry or literature. But there was no fustiness involved. Soseki was a brilliant student of English literature, a poet in classical Chinese, a traditional watercolourist, a noted calligrapher..... Iwanami Shigeo, a member of the group, was also the founder of the most important scholarly publishing house in Japan, then and now. Asai Chu was one of the most important Western-style oil painters in Japan in the late 19th century who was also a brilliant designer... The list goes on and on. To page through this book is to discover a circle of friends able to adroitly balance the past and the present to face the future. In a very practical way, these intellectuals were as important to the development of a strong and independent Japan in the 20th century as any general or politician, perhaps more important. This is by no means a common book. There is a bit of foxing throughout and the illustrated slipcase is a bit soiled and worn, but it is still a wonderful artifact of its time.

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