Shishu^ NATSU NO TEGAMI

1937. KITASONO Katue, poet & ONCHI Koshiro, artist. Shishu NATSU NO TEGAMI. Tokyo, Aoi Shobo, Showa 12 [1937] Folio, 30.0 X 22.0 cm, #22 of 200 copies printed. The binding, the typography, the illustrations, all combine as a fluid visual container for Kitasono's brilliant poems. Interesting to compare this work to the other collaboration (done by the same publisher a year later) of Onchi and Kitasono, SABOTEN-TO. On an interesting side note, when Kitasono sent a copy of this book to his friend Ezra Pound, for whom he had obtained a lucrative position for the JAPAN TIMES as Italian correspondent, the latter confessed he could not even begin to read it (his Chinese was poor and his Japanese non-existent). There is not space here to even begin to describe Kitasono's importance to world art and literature. I would refer you to the several works of John Solt, both translations and critical essays, as well as several exhibitions dedicated to Kitasono mounted here and in Europe, as well. Fine condition, complete as issued. I can locate only two institutional holdings, the British Museum and Mount Holyoke College. I have handled a another copy of this work, which had a wraparound case, but research indicates that was not an original case, but was commissioned later, perhaps by the orighinal collector. Complete and lovely. (Inventory #: 90861)