Adele Marie Okamoto (3 results)

First Edition. Photographic frontispiece and one other illustration. Red cloth covered boards lettered in gilt. Pictorial endpapers. Four page errata loosely inserted. Light age toning to the edges. v+ 324pp, [1] (Publishing details in Japanese). Scarce. An account of the author's childhood and early adulthood as the daughter of a Japanese mother and German father.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Boards in red cloth with gilt lettering. Minor wear to board edges. Pictorial endpapers. Front inner hinge professionally repaired. Some age toning to pages. Unmarked. Two photographs on plates: portraits of the author and her mother. pp. v, 324, [1]. An uncommon book and memoir of an uncommon woman. Adele Marie Okamoto was the daughter of a Japanese mother and a German father and acquired enough English culture to consider herself British. She relates her experiences during the early part of the century, in Borneo, Singapore, Kobe and elsewhere in Japan. The account relates her quite traumatic childhood, experiences both during and after the time of the first world war, and her mystical inclinations: while lying near death in a hospital, she twice met ''the Sage'' or ''the Great One,'' she is visited by a Buddhist seer, and she regularly pulls wisdom from both Eastern and Western religious traditions. [The identity of the author is not completely certain; it's likely that she was the wife of the Japanese millionaire philanthropist Chobun Yonezo Okamoto who, in 1937 along with his wife Adele, prospected the founding of a university in Southern California which would promote cross-cultural relations between East and West.].

Tapa dura editorial. 2h. VI p.324 p. 1h Raro, encuadernación rozada 21x15 cm.