An Interesting Side Note

 

Yesterday evening Susan and Andy came over to show me a couple of items they had bought at an estate sale. They were two old Japanese fairy tale books that they had got for Kameron because of his interest in Japanese culture. They were somewhat damaged (one lacked a front cover and the other had a chunk out of the detached spine) and I don’t think they paid over ten dollars for them. But you could tell they had been beautifully made and exquisitely printed, on strangely textured, limp, but strong sheets. My curiosity was aroused, and using only the titles (The Serpent with Eight Heads and The Silly Jellyfish) did some quick research.

It turns out they were Volumes 9 and 13 of a “Japanese Fairy Tale Series, Nos. 1-20 (English), complete set of 20 numbers, Tokyo, all but one carry the 17 Kami Negishi address for Hasegawa, small size for a Hasegawa/Kobunsha book, small 18mo (4 x 6 in - 10.3 x 15.1~2 cm), crepe paper in folded sheets. -  http://www.baxleystamps.com/litho/hasegawa/20vol.shtml

Hasegawa Takejirō (長谷川武次郎, 1853–1938) was an innovative Japanese publisher specializing in books in European languages on Japanese subjects. Hasegawa employed leading foreign residents as translators and noted Japanese artists as illustrators, and became a leading purveyor of export books and publications for foreign residents in Japan. – Wikipedia.

Chirimen, or crepe, is a Japanese textile that has a fine, wrinkled texture. For centuries it has been used to make kimono, furoshiki (wrapping cloth), and many other decorative objects used in daily life. I recently learned of the genre of books made not with textile crepe but with crepe paper (chirimen-gami). Called Chirimen-bon (crepe-paper books), their covers and text pages are made entirely of crepe paper. Chirimen-bon were first produced by Takejiro Hasegawa, who began to publish them in 1886, not long after trade reopened between Japan and the West after almost 300 years of isolation. Japonisme was much enjoyed in Europe, and chirimen-e, or chirimen-ukiyoe—woodcut prints that are processed to add texture—were popular by that time.  https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/in-circulation/2016/crepe-paper

Depending on which edition and printing they are from, these books are anything from one hundred to a hundred and twenty years old. Their condition, as I stated, is poor, and they would probably not be worth anything to a serious collector. Still, they are wondrous little things and a connection to the past. It would be curious to know how they came to be in our small Texas town, whether the owner had the whole series, and if they were collectors or just some long ago children who got them as an entertaining present once upon a time. The mind slowly blossoms with musing on it. In the meantime, these orphans of the storm have a new home with a new family and just might stay with them for the next hundred years.