Lightning Robber (1 results)

Condition: very good. Tokyo, Sanshindo 1899 (Meiji 32*). 21x14cm, publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; three double page illustrations. The wrapper and last leaf (this was not issued with a back wrapper, an advertisement leaf was joined to a stub of the cover and spine) have been repaired but I'm not sure how much. It is so near invisible. An excellent, fresh copy in a chic case by binder, writer and fastidious collector Ikuta Atsuo. Third edition, three months after the first. The Lightning Robber - Inazuma Goto, the title of this book - was Sakamoto Keijiro, arrested in February1899 after escaping jail in 1895, a lot of robberies and three murders. This was the stuff of sensation mongering of course, plays were performed in 1897 and 1899. In 1899 four or more books called Lightning Robber appeared; that is, I found four titles but I don't know how many of them are different books. This seems to have 24 more pages than what is likely the first edition, published by Kinshindo, and either uses the same sheets or was printed from the same plates. *But. Those extra pages finish with his death in February 1900, months after the date on the colophon printed on the other side of the same page. Can publishers ever be trusted?The Lightning Robber was conflated with the previous decade's Pistol Robber and one of our four or so books shows him in bowler and overcoat firing at a policeman. Japan's first feature film, 'Pisutoru Goto Shimizu Sadakichi' (pistol robber Shimizu Sadakichi) but also called 'Inazuma Goto', appeared the same year. Worldcat does not find this version and none of their four titles are found outside Japan.