[Seiko] Kaikoku heidan [Military Defense of a Maritime Nation].
Many woodcut illus., some full-page & double-page. Ten columns per page; 20 characters per column. Eight vols. 8vo, orig. blue (now partly faded to pale green) patterned wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, new stitching. Japan: Prefaces dated 1786; title-page with the date “1854.”
A privately printed edition of this famous text and an extremely rare example of a mokkatsujiban (a movable wooden type Japanese book printed after 1653; for a fascinating discussion, see Kornicki, The Book in Japan, pp. 159-63).
Hayashi (1738-93), was a Japanese scholar and a specialist in military affairs. In 1777, he travelled to... More