Louis Wertheimber 1887 A Muramasa Blade A Story Of Feudalism In Old Japan HC

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A Muramasa Blade
A Story Of Feudalism In Old Japan

by

Louis Wertheimber

Hardcover. 8vo. Ticknor and Company, Boston, MA. 1887. xvi, 188 pgs. Illustrated throughout with 5 copper engravings by Nakamura Munehiro and 19 full-page wood engravings, along with many smaller wood-engraved text illustrations, by Shirayama Dani.

Bound in publisher's green cloth decorated in gold and black with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present.  Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

This story is an original tale of Old Japan, written almost from a Japanese point of view. It might be translated into that language and rendered in book form or told on a street corner by one of the itinerant story-tellers, the reader or listener would think it to accord fully with the traditions of the period in which it is supposed to have been enacted. Whether such a treatment will meet with approval here, it remains for the public to say. I have adhered to it against the advice of several eminent literary friends, to bring the story more into accord with our canons of style and construction. From the standpoint of a Japanese, none of the incidents or situations are in the slightest degree strained or exaggerated, and none of the characters overdrawn. All the historical allu- sions are strictly true and authentic, — as far as present knowledge on the subject goes, — and have been carefully and painstakingly culled from native chronicles.

The five engravings on copper have been executed by a Japanese, Mr. Nakamura Munehiro, of Tokyo, one of the best engravers in Japan, who also made the original drawings for the same. The other pictures were drawn by Shirayama Dani, a young porcelain painter in the employ of Fujiyama, of this city. It shows the versatility of Japanese artists, that although the young man had never in his life done anything but porcelain painting, which is done in pure wash, he succeeded without instruction, in a very few days, in making pictures for reproduction. In spite of their sharp outline they are done not with pen and ink, but with a Japanese brush.