Description
Japan Travel Bureau [Published Date: 1957]. Hardcover, 177 pp. Seventh Edition, 1957.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
114
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In very good condition / NO dust jacket. Light brown cloth covered boards with black lettering on front and spine]. Light scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Missing dust jacket. Black and white illustrations with some in color. [From Editorial Note] The purpose of the Tourist Library Series is to give to the passing tourists and other foreigners interested in Japan a basic knowledge of various phases of Japanese culture . . . From the beginning the Library attained a high reputation as a concise but reliable interpreter of Japanese culture, and the demand for the volumes steadily increased both in Japan and abroad.. . Each volume in the Library is the work of a recognized authority on the subject. . . The present volume, "Bonsai," is the work of Mr. Norio Kobayashi, who has been publishing and editing 'Bonsai', which is the most influential monthly magazine on the subject in this country, since its inception 30 years ago. A former lecturer at the Tokyo College of Gardening, and one of the founders and major executives of the Kokufu Bonsai Tenrankai, the biggest bonsai exhibition annually held in this country, he is an acknowledged authority on bonsai in present-day Japan. [From Preface] Painting, sculpture and other branches of art enable us to visualize afresh the scenes and other objects, animate or inanimate, which have excited our sense of beauty in the past. But there is a living thing which goes a little farther and enables us to envisage a piece of scenery which is subject to seasonal changes, and that is what the Japanese call a "bonsai." Because of its uniqueness one can say that the art of making a bonsai is in a class by itself. Western lovers of art and nature, who are convinced that bonsai-making is a unique art, have asked me various questions about it. . . In the limited space offered by this booklet it is next to impossible to go into full details on the subject. The object . . .is mainly to give the reader the assurance that the bonsai is not merely a triumph of dwarfing to be wondered at, but that it is also a thing of beauty designed to take the beholder into the realms of poetry where he can see in his imagination some landscape or other as presented by Nature.