KANAGAKI, Robun 假名垣魯文.

Seiyo ryori tsu 西洋料理通 [Connoisseurship of Western Cuisine].

Illus. by Kyōsai Kawanabe 河鍋曉齋. Double-page frontispiece illus. printed in color & numerous other illus. (some printed in color). 30 (title printed on yellow paper); 32; 26 folding leaves. Three vols. Small 8vo, orig. semi-stiff blue wrappers, title-slips on upper covers, new stitching. Tokyo & other cities: Mankyukaku 萬笈閣, 1872.

First edition of this rare work; it is complete with the supplementary third volume. Finely illustrated by Kyōsai Kawanabe, it is one of the two earliest books to introduce Western cooking techniques and recipes into Japan (the other is Keigakuo Shujin’s Seiyo ryori shinan, published in the same year). Our book is the first work to include the recipes for the beloved “curry and rice,” introduced by British sailors and still so popular in Japan; pork cutlet; and apple pie.

Kanagaki (1829-94), was a journalist and author of light fiction. He and his friend and collaborator, the painter Kyōsai Kawanabe (1831-89), lauded as the greatest successor of Hokusai, created what is considered to be the first manga magazine, Eshinbun nipponchi (Illustrated News). Roger Keyes, in his Ehon. The Artist and the Book in Japan (NYPL: 2006), p. 234, describes Kyōsai as “prodigiously talented.”

Kanagaki drew from a manuscript notebook of recipes compiled by an English person living in Yokohama. The notebook had been prepared to teach the family’s Japanese servants how to prepare Western dishes.

The first double-page color printed illustration depicts two Japanese and two Westerners, all in Western clothes, being served a meal by a Chinese servant. The following illustrations depict Western table- and glassware, cutlery, Western ovens and pans, table settings, etc. There are 110 recipes: those in Vol. I are devoted to soups; the second to fish, meats, stews, and sauces; and the third to vegetables and desserts as well as cooking times and techniques.

The woodcut illustrations are particularly handsome and show scenes from the kitchen with servants making broth, roasting meats, and preparing fish; the Yokohama food market; Westerners entertaining Japanese, etc.

The introduction to this work makes it clear the book was written for the purpose of improving the nutrition of the Japanese.

Fine copy. Minor marginal worming in Vols. II and III.

❧ For the artist Kyōsai, see Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, pp. 937 & 955.