Kanjinsuki No Geijutsuron. (Uber das Geistige in der Kunst Insbesondere in der Malerei).

Tokyo.: Idea-Shoin., 1924 (Tai Sho 13).. Original publisher's scarlet cloth with gilt vignettes after Kandinsky to front and rear boards, original card slipcase with illustration after Kandinsky to front cover and printed text in Japanese to spine and rear cover.. 4to. (258 x 198 mm).. Printed title in Japanese and Western characters on glossy paper, monochrome photographic portrait of Kandinsky with reproduction of his signature as frontispiece, Kandinsky's translated text in Japanese (with occasional insertions in Western characters) illustrated with 9 monochrome text vignettes, 3 'Tabelle' of colour theory and 57 plates on a variety of paper stocks (9 in colour and 48 in monochrome, several with multiple images on the same sheet, including the 'Abbildungen' at rear), final leaf with imprint verso; the illustration incorporates that for 'Uber das Geistige in der Kunst' as well as many from 'Klänge'. A very scarce edition of Kandinsky's Uber das Geistige in der Kunst published in Japan in 1924.Although Reinhard Piper feared that Kandinsky's treatise on abstraction would not sell well, the book required three editions in the first year it was published. This Japanese edition, published nearly 15 years after the original, incorporates the text and woodcuts of the earlier editions as well as Kandinsky's later introductions to the first and second editions as well as illustration from 'Klänge'. The majority of the plates depict work by Kandinsky but works by Dürer, Raphael, Cézanne, and others are also included.The Japanese translation is by Obara Kuniyoshi (1887 - 1977), the publisher, translator and educational theorist and president of Tamagawa University which he founded. His Idea-Shoin publishing house (later the Tamagawa University Press) was established in 1923 and aimed to produce teaching material, educational work for children (Obara published the first encyclopedia for Japanese children) as well as the complete works of the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Obara's translation of the present work is not only an indication of the importance of Kandinsky's text and theories but also casts light on the emergence of Japan's own avant-garde and its international influences.'The book, which he [Kandinsky] claimed had been gestating for nearly a decade, elucidated his artistic theories and his valuing of expression and spirituality over naturalistic representation. It also introduced his new pictorial categories derived from the field of music - impressions, improvisations, and compositions - which further de-emphasized the importance of recognizable subject matter. On the cover and in ten woodcuts, Kandinsky illustrated his ideas by reducing complex scenes of spiritual battle and redemption to simplified designs of lines and shapes. For Kandinsky, abstraction was a weapon for transforming what he perceived to be a corrupt, materialist society.' (see MOMA catalogue).'One of the most important manifestos of modern art. Written in 1910 and first published in 1912, Kandinsky's book is anti-materialistic and anti-naturalistic, calling for painting that goes beyond a recording of the visible world. The non-objective woodcuts are historically important as early graphic demonstrations of the artist's thesis.' (The Artist and the Book).Obara's translation is scarce and we can trace only the copies at the Metropolitan Museum and the Phillips collection outside Japan, for which OCLC list copies at the National Diet Library and Waseda University Library.[see Roethel 82 - 92; see The Artist and the Book 137 for the first edition of 1912].