HAKU’UN SANJIN 白雲山人, author & HISHIKAWA, Kiyoharu 菱川清春, artist.

Sasa no mi ki 竹實記 [Record of the Seeds of the Bamboo].

Three double-page woodcut illus. 12 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. wrappers embossed with bamboo motifs, orig. printed label (quite rubbed), orig. stitching. Kyōto: Kanaya yoshibe’e 金屋吉兵衛, 1832.

First edition of this book arguing for the use of bamboo grass (Sasa veitchii) as a food source. The book is rare, with only one copy in North America.

“In the spring of Tenpō 3 (1832), Sasa veitchii flowered and ripened in the area of Takayama in Hida [in today’s Gifu prefecture], yielding up to 250,000 koku. The author rejects the theory that the seeds of bamboo grass and bamboo are poisonous or a portent of a bad harvest, and advocates the use of the seeds” (Isono Naohide 磯野直秀 [1936-2012], National Diet Library website). The author quotes from scholarly literature on the bamboo.

According to Wikipedia, bamboo grass was known as “wild wheat” (nomugi 野麦) in Hida domain, and it was used there as a famine-relief crop. The word lives on in a place name in Takayama, Nomugi tōge 野麦峠, “Wild-wheat pass.”

There are three fine double-page woodcut illustrations showing peasants harvesting the bamboo grass and the plant itself with its seeds.

The illustration of a gall — a blister caused by an insect — on a bamboo plant is signed Enaō 荏野翁, which has led researchers to believe that the author hiding behind the pseudonym Hermit of the White Cloud (Haku’un sanjin) is Tanaka Ōhide 田中大秀 (1777-1847), who used Enaō as a style name. A national-studies (kokugaku 国学) scholar and the head of the Ena shrine 荏名神社 in Takayama, Tanaka authored an important study of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the Heian-period literary work.

The book was republished in 1850 from the same blocks but with minor changes to the wording. It may have been republished because another great flourishing of bamboo grass had occurred.

Very good copy, preserved in a chitsu. Some minor worming close to the gutter.