(Nihon Kokon Meika Zukai.) Short Biographies of Emineni [sic] Japanese in Ancient and Modern Times.

A rare survival of this lavishly illustrated production

First edition, volume 1, of the biographical instalment of a trilingual publication project celebrating the beautiful land and remarkable people of Japan. The present edition is in English, with a colophon in Japanese.

The editor planned on publishing two works of ten volumes each, in a style similar to each other, each containing ten illustrations. All volumes were to comprise short descriptions for each plate (landscape or personality) in Japanese, Chinese, and English.

The present work is the second part, for which only two volumes of the announced ten were apparently produced. This copy's historical figures include: Yamatotake No Mikoto, Jingu Kogu, Takenouchi No Sukune, Wage No Kiyomaro, Minamoto No Yoshiie, Taira No Shigemori, Hojo Tokimune, Kusunoki Masashige, Kato Kiyomasa, and Saigo Takamori; each with a page of description before and after the double-page illustration. Although contents seem to have been varying in the two issued volumes between the present 1887 edition and the 1890 reprint, the National Diet Library gives volumes listing the aforementioned as the first instalment. Library Hub only lists five copies in the US, one in Europe (BnF), and one in Japan (at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies), CiNii gives an extra holding at the BL.

Of the first part, titled The Pictorial Descriptions of a Hundred Famous Places of Japan and published in 1895, Library Hub has no records, and we were unable to determine if any other volumes were ever produced. Evidently any surviving volumes from this project are rare.