Four inscribed volumes: Maigo [Where Is Mother?], Magatta kawa [The Winding River], Yobigoe [A Voice Calling], and Jihibiki [The Great Rumbling]

Tokyo: Fukutake Pub. Co., Ltd., 1986. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Four volumes. All oblong octavo octavo (12" x 8.5") in glossy illustrated paper boards, with matching dust jackets; all are first editions save No. 2, which we believe is a sixth printing. Unpaginated (each volume ~30pp.). Text in Japanese. All four volumes include laid-in folded sheets with English-language translations by Susan Matsui; N.B. No. 2 incorrectly includes the translation sheet for a different title in the series. All are identically signed, dated, and inscribed by Yoshida opposite the title page to a former owner, believed to be American jewelry artist Linda MacNeil (although we have been unable to confirm that provenance). Yoshida (1911-1995) was a Japanese artist best known for his woodblock prints in the shin-hanga style he learned from his father, printmaker Hiroshi Yoshida, under whose shadow Yoshida labored for much of his career. Following his father's death in 1950, Yoshida finally felt emboldened to break away from representation, and began a long period of abstract experimentation. Eventually he returned to the animal subjects that had marked his early years, and relatively late in life embarked on a series of children's books about African wildlife, the Animal Picture Book series. Yoshida completed seventeen of a planned twenty volumes before his death. Light bumping to the corners of a couple volumes, else about fine in like jackets. Quite scarce both in the trade and institutionally (four or fewer holdings of each title found in OCLC, searching by ISBN).