Zenzō honcho kokon retsujoden 全像本朝古今列女傳 [Complete Lives of Our Nation’s Virtuous Women from Ancient to...
181 fine full-page woodcuts. Printed throughout in kanbun. Ten vols. 8vo, orig. semi-stiff blue wrappers (some rubbing), orig. block-printed title slips on upper covers (some slips a little defective), new stitching. Kyoto: Murakami Heirakuji 村上平樂寺, 1668.
First edition, and very rare, of this work on the famous women of Japan. It contains brief lives of 217 celebrated Japanese women, drawn from history and legend, accompanied by 181 full-page woodcuts. It was modeled after the book of Chinese heroines by Liu Xiang (77-6 BCE), the Chinese astronomer, historian, librarian, and bibliographer. Liu Xiang’s book served as a standard Confucian... More