Search Results: Japanese American from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

Tokyo: Yihikaku Shobo Hatsubai, 1900. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. An economic survey of the United States, covering geography, the political system, transportation, banking, insurance, agriculture (including chapters on specific crops), manufacturing (with sections devoted to more than twenty separate industries), newspapers, and religion, plus an appendix on Canada. The book makes few references to Japanese already in the US and is aimed at investors and entrepreneurs in Japan. Mizutani (styled as Mizutany in the US) was the Chicago representative of the Japan Central Tea Traders Association in the 1890s, As a principal of Gottlieb, Mizutany & Co. and later T. Mizutany & Co., he imported tea from Japan for decades. 12, 14, 832 pages. OCLC: 38313444, 672477852. First edition. A very good copy; no publisher's slipcase or sleeve.

Osaka: Okashima Shoten, 1903. First Edition. Trade paperback. Good. A rare guide to coming to America published during the brief window during the first years of the 20th century when it was legal for Japanese citizens to emigrate to the United States, before the 1907 Gentlemen's Agreement made the process much more difficult. Still, this book reflects the tenor of the times. In the section on clearing immigration on arrival in the US, one of the role-play examples (in English) is "Q: Are you an anarchist or not? A. Not at all." (p. 98). "A guide to America for students which compliments [Seinen no to-Bei (America-bound Youth)] by the same author. Discusses passport procedures, the passage, arrival formalities and provides information on being a 'school boy', matriculation problems, and the American educational system"-A Buried Past, 132. The author of this book was the first ordained Japanese episcopal priest and the founder of the church's Japanese mission in San Francisco. Yoshimura was an… Read More

Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1903. A guide to America which provides general information as well as specific facts on the American educational system, matriculation requirements, and curricula, especially of colleges and universities. The appendix consists of a list of selected American colleges and universities."-A Buried Past, 113. The author may be Rippo Eitaro Iijima, a 1904 Master's graduate of the University of Southern California, who co-founded Rafu Shimpo, the Los Angeles Japanese Daily News, the largest Japanese American newspaper. A USC student named Iijima definitely started the newspaper with two other students in April 1903. He first name is variously given as Rippo or Eitaro, depending on the source. The 1904 Circular of Information for USC gives his name as Rippo Eitaro Iijima. The book includes a one-page introduction in English; a fold-out outline map of the United States showing state borders, eight halftone plates of universities, and nine pages of publisher's ads. [10], 3, [1], [8… Read More

Tokyo: Burajiru ni Okeru Nihonjin Hattenshi Kanko Iinkai [Publication Committee for the History of Japanese Development in Brazil], 1942. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. A two-volume history of the Japanese in Brazil by a one-time California resident who helped open Brazil for the Japanese. The first Japanese immigrants settled in Brazil in 1908, not coincidentally the year after the Gentleman's Agreement restricted immigration to the United States. The new arrivals mostly pursued coffee cultivation around Sao Paulo. The first volume covers the diplomatic agreements and legal framework for Japanese immigrants in Brazil. The second volume describes the various colonies established, successful businesses, and offers biographies of some pioneers. These volumes were published to coincide with the 2600th anniversary of Japan, a milestone used to stoke the flames of nationalism in the early 1940s. These books were reprinted in the 1950s, when Japanese immigration to Brazil boomed again, and then… Read More

Tokyo: Kaizosha, 1929. First Edition. Very good. A sequel to Tekisasu mushuku ta sanjuichi pen [Hoboing in Texas and Thirty-one Other Stories] modeled after The Decameron. Hasegawa "spins stories about people's lives in an urban space, although the time and place are no longer the medieval Rome of the Decameron but twentieth-century New York. The main characters are 'Merican-Japs ["meriken jappu"] whose background and reasons for immigration and migration vary, but what is common to them is that they live in a poor, dark neighborhood in Manhattan. Living like hobos, they work as gamblers, acrobats, bootleggers, owners of illegal bars, poets, or assistants to tipsters."-Kyoko Omori, Detecting Japanese Vernacular Modernism, p. 239. These stories are set amongst the immigrants of Third Avenue in New York: "It may be said they happily established a country - a country that exists even if it does not appear on a map of the world... A Bulgarian marries a Turk and has an American baby girl. The American… Read More

Tokyo: Rodo Shinbunsha, 1901. Trade paperback. Near fine. The third printing (same year as the first) of this very scarce guide to emigration to the United States. "A brief guide to America primarily for students and laborers. The author describes his own 13-year experience in America as a student and laborer from 1884 to 1896. Also reprints short notes from students studying in America. The appendix consists of basic English."-A Buried Past, 117. The appendix presents words in Japanese kanji, with the phonetic pronunciation in English using katakana characters. (NB: This is the same book as Tobei annai, the title listed in A Buried Past. See Tokyo Life, New York Dreams, chapter 6, footnote 56.) This guide was published by the socialist Labor Press and was a publication of Katayama's immigration company, the Association for the America-Bound (Tobei Kyokai). Among the courses of study Katayama recommends is medine, since "the anatomy of Americans, Japanese and Indians are all the same" (pp.… Read More

Tokyo: Daigakukan, 1906. First Edition. Trade paperback. Very good. A little known Meiji-era novel narrated by a young Japanese immigrant in the United States. The narrator seems to have come from the class of poor young people with knowledge of the modern world but little chance of advancement in tradition-bound Japan. He offers opinions and philosophical musings on life, making this a combination of travelog, immigration guide, and sardonic look at 20th century life. A sense of the writer's attitude can be found in his nom de plume, which translates to "returnee to the heavenly shores," although the character for heaven (天) can also mean imperial. From the tone of the book, the double entendre heavenly/imperial is offered sarcastically. For more on this and similar books, see "Meiji go hanki no tobei netsu: America no ryuukou" by Tachikawa Kenji (Shirin, Vol. 69, no. 3, May 1986). OCLC: 672445413 (National Diet Library). First edition. A very good or better copy but for a crack on the back… Read More

Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1929. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. An illustrated collection of comical adventures in the United States written and drawn by one of the key figures in the development of modern-day manga, Shishido Sako. Shishido's Supido Taro is widely cited as the first manga to incorporate storytelling techniques from American films, and it was one of the most popular comics in 1930s Japan. Shishido's adaptation of American newspaper comic strip style and camera angles from film is widely cited as originating from the travels described in this Amerika no yokoppara, he also cites Japanese translations of American comics as an influence in this book. Shishido spent nine years in the US, beginning in 1912. According to these memoirs, he went to the movies almost every day. Their influence can be seen in many of the 101 full-page drawings in the book. Shishido frequently draws scenes from the point of view of a high-angle camera shot. He also regularly employs split screens to show… Read More

Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1929. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. An illustrated collection of comical adventures in the United States written and drawn by one of the key figures in the development of modern-day manga, Shishido Sako. Shishido's Supido Taro is widely cited as the first manga to incorporate storytelling techniques from American films, and it was one of the most popular comics in 1930s Japan. Shishido's adaptation of American newspaper comic strip style and camera angles from film is widely cited as originating from the travels described in this book. Shishido spent nine years in the US, beginning in 1912. According to these memoirs, he went to the movies almost every day. Their influence can be seen in many of the 101 full-page drawings in the book. Shishido frequently draws scenes from the point of view of a high-angle camera shot. He also regularly employs split screens to show simultaneous action and disappearing walls to depict actions behind closed doors. The prevalence of guns, fist… Read More

New York, 1917. Sidney Gulick, a Congregational minister, spent twenty-five years in Japan working for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. When he returned to the US, in 1913, he advocated for better US-Japanese relations and the end of discrimination against Japanese immigrants in America. He published several books and pamphlets on these subjects in the 1910s and 1920s. This two-page mimeographed typescript describes the favorable responses of American labor union officials (who strongly supported anti-Asian legislation) to US tours by Japanese government and parliamentary officials between 1914 and 1917. The typescript refers to a dinner hosted by George Shima, "popularly known as the Japanese 'Potato King'" (and the richest Japanese American immigrant) "which several representatives of organized labor... attended." The typescript also describes meetings between Japanese officials and Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor. Gulick, ever the… Read More

Tokyo: Kokusai Heiwa Sangyokai, 1954. First Edition. Hardcover. Biographical sketches of John Aiso, Hiroshi Miyamura, Ben Kuroki, and Mike Masaoka; interviews with Fujioka Shiro and Mike Masaoka; and profiles of 300-odd Issei and Nisei. Includes brief essays on the exclusion movement, internment, and the second generation."-A Buried Past, 633.1. The subjects of the book are the highest ranking Japanese American officer during World War Two and the first Nisei judge in the contiguous 48 states (Aiso); a Congressional Medal of Honor winner during the Korean War (Miyamura); the only Nisei combat fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater during World War Two (Kuroki); and the first volunteer for the all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team and a representive of the Japanese American Citizens League in negotiations over internment with the federal government (Masaoka). A letter from Vice President Richard Nixon reproduced in facsimile at the front along with an introduction in English by the author… Read More

Tokyo: Showatosho, 1942. First Edition. Trade paperback. Very good. In all likelihood, this is the first published book to describe the internment of the Japanese in the United States following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Taguchi (1905-1956), a Japanese documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, had been in the United States for several years making newsreels for American studios; he was also the head of the US office of the Nippon News Film Corporation. In early December 1941, FBI agents arrested and questioned Taguchi. He was imprisoned on Ellis Island along with other Japanese, German and Italian nationals, all of whom had also been classified as enemy aliens. Taguchi was returned to Japan in 1942 as part of a negotiated prisoner exchange with the Japanese government. He published this blow-by-blow account of the indignities of the process in December 1942. Taguchi's experience at the start of the war was similar to that of many Japanese immigrants in the US. As far as I am aware, no other… Read More

Tokyo: Rokko Shuppanbu, 1943. First Edition. Trade paperback. Very good. A very scarce wartime history of the Japanese in California that argues that the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans was a symptom of the same pervasive anti-Japanese attitudes among Americans that had contributed to the Second World War. The author, according to Yuji Ichioka writing in Before Internment (p. 263), was an "Issei who had lived in California for many years, working as a newspaperman for Japanese immigrant newspapers... The outbreak of the Pacific War found Ebina in Tokyo because he had returned to Japan in November 1941. At the beginning he was employed part-time by NHK Radio to write anti-American radio scripts and served as a commentator on the arrest and detention of Issei leaders and the eventual mass internment of the entire West Coast Japanese California." Ebina's December 1943 book, "Kariforunia to Nihonjin...rehashed the history of anti-Japanese racism in California and attributed the internment… Read More

Yokohama: (the author / Tokyo Insatsu Kabushiki Kaisha Yokohama Bunsha), 1900. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. A privately printed version of the diary kept by Otani Kahyoe, the president of the Japan Central Tea Traders' Association. "Mr. Otani visited America and Europe in 1899-1900, when he represented both the Tokyo and Yokohama Chambers of Commerce at the Philadelphia Commercial Convention" (William Harrison Ukers, All About Tea, vol. 2, p. 224). The book provides brief day-by-day accounts of his travels, the scenery, business meetings and dinners he attended, with regular mentions (without much description) of tea shops and tea merchants he visited along the way. Otani was a merchant in Yokohama and worked as "a buyer for Smith, Baker and Co., one of the large Western merchant houses active in the city. Apparently with financial backing from this firm, he became an export merchant himself in 1868, and he rose to become the leading figure in the Yokohama tea export trade by 1890"-Edward… Read More

New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1908. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. The book that introduced the game of go to the English-speaking world. Smith's book drew heavily on the articles on the game by Oskar Korschelt, which were only published in a German journal of Far Eastern studies. Korschelt learned the game from Murase Shobo, the best player in the 1870s. Smith credits his knowledge of go to Mokichi Nakamura, a Japanese American immigrant in New York, and Jihei Hashiguchi, the editor of The Japan Current, in Seattle, Washington. Smith's book has been reprinted and reissued many times in the century since it first appeared. Go, like chess, has relatively simple rules but is one of the most complex games to play. Like chess, training supercomputers to play go is a key test of AI capability. About Mokichi Nakamura, Smith's primary Japanese-American informant, not much is known. He registered for the draft at the beginning of the First World War, at which time he was living and… Read More

London: Peter Owen, 1970. First British edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. The British edition of Yoko Ono's conceptual art book, first published in 1964 in Japan, which mostly consists of instructions for performances or individual actions ("Carry a bag of peas. Leave a pea wherever you go"). Many of the pieces cannot (yet) be performed: "Prescribe pills for going through the wall and have only the hair come back." The first instruction, printed on the jacket flap, is "Burn this book after you've read it." This 1970 version expands somewhat on the Japanese original. It also includes an "introduction" by John Lennon, which consists of reproductions of a couple of sketches and the text, "Hi! My name is John Lennon / I'd like you to meet Yoko Ono." 288 pages (according to the jacket). About 5-1/2 inches square. This UK edition was published on June 11, 1970 (according to the Liverpool Daily Post of June 10) and it has a different jacket design than the US edition, which was published a few… Read More

Los Angeles: Rafu Shimposha, 1929. Pamphlet. Very good. The editor of the largest Japanese daily newspaper in Los Angeles offers an introduction to American politics, culture, and economics. Each section, written in Japanese, concludes with a list of English-language resources divided into categories of periodicals, books, and in one case, films. Illustrated with several small charts and maps. ii, 34 pages. 5 by 6-3/4 inches. Not located in any reference. First edition. Stains on the front wrapper, else very good. Stapled pamphlet.

Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1906. First Edition. Trade paperback. Very good/Very good. A scarce and interesting look at a Japanese laborer's view of the possibilities of working in America at the height of Japanese immigration to this country. "Based on the author's 4-year personal experience in America, this book presents facts on labor conditions and wages by skilled versus unskilled, urban versus rural job categories and on the prospects for employment for Japanese workers."-A Buried Past, 120. Kawamura (who shares a name with a well-known Japanese banker) provides one of the most detailed guides to working in the United States published in the Meiji era, just before the Gentlemen's Agreement severely restricted Japanese immigration to the United States. He provides anecdotal and detailed information on dozens of professions and industries in the United States accessible to Japanese immigrants, from work in mines and railroads to farming (with separate entries for dozens of crops) to service jobs in… Read More

Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1906. First Edition. Trade paperback. Good. A scarce and interesting look at a Japanese laborer's view of the possibilities of working in America at the height of Japanese immigration to this country. "Based on the author's 4-year personal experience in America, this book presents facts on labor conditions and wages by skilled versus unskilled, urban versus rural job categories and on the prospects for employment for Japanese workers."-A Buried Past, 120. Kawamura (who shares a name with a well-known Japanese banker) provides one of the most detailed guides to working in the United States published in the Meiji era, just before the Gentlemen's Agreement severely restricted Japanese immigration to the United States. He provides anecdotal and detailed information on dozens of professions and industries in the United States accessible to Japanese immigrants, from work in mines and railroads to farming (with separate entries for dozens of crops) to service jobs in cities. He seems… Read More

Honolulu: Nippu Jiji Co, 1941. Trade paperback. Good. The fifteenth and final volume of this guide to American life and to Hawaii, followed by a directory of the Japanese American residents of Hawaii. This directory was published in February 1941, just over nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese air force. It includes a list of community organizations, a directory of businesses, production statistics, results of sporting events, a list of government officials, and a guide to US immigration procedures. The directory of residents has separately paginated sections for each island with a map of the island inserted before the directory entries. Each entry includes the city where they were born and their profession. [6], 8, 294, 308, 52, 52, 8, 44, 100, 22 pages plus 32 pages of plates and inserted ads. Printed on newsprint. OCLC: 41204336 (for the serial; 1941 issue appears to be held by Stanford, Harvard, and perhaps the Library of Congress). A good-only copy, LACKING the… Read More