Sumida Ritsu (1 results)

Numerous woodcut illus. Four vols. 8vo, later wrappers, new stitching. [Japan]: Sh?getsuro ???, 1861. First edition of this richly illustrated work written for instructing Japanese children to read and write kanshi ??, classical Chinese verse. Such instruction was part of the kangaku curriculum. "Kangaku (literally 'Chinese learning') means mainly Confucian studies, but also Chinese history and culture in a wider sense, kanbun (classical Chinese and Sino-Japanese language and the literature written in it) and kanshi (Sino-Japanese poetry in the Chinese style). Education before 1868 meant chiefly education in kangaku, and a knowledge of kangaku continued to be viewed as the hallmark of a good education until well into the Meiji period. Kanbun, as classical Chinese or heavily Sinified versions of Japanese, was the language of scholarship, official documents and 'serious' writing in general" (Margaret Mehl, "Chinese Learning [kangaku] in Meiji Japan [18681912]," History 85.277 [2000]: pp. 48-49). Our book, published shortly before the Meiji restoration, thus appeared when the kangaku paradigm was still in full force. Rather than referring to all poetry written in Chinese, kanshi meant what in Chinese was called "regulated verse" (lüshi ??), referring to poetic genres that flourished under the Tang dynasty. This kind of poetry was based on tonal prosody, fixed numbers of syllables per line, and end rhyme. The language of the poems is classical Chinese (kanbun). Our book explains this to the reader using diagrams featuring full, half-full, and empty circles. The diagrams give verse schemas for poems beginning with oblique tones and level tones for the genre of seven-character sekku ?? (Ch. jueju), which has four lines. The main body of the book contains examples of kanshi, with the addition of circles to indicate the meter and Japanese reading marks. The rhyme used by each poem is marked with a circled character. Every poem is illustrated by a woodcut. For example, the poem "The Broken Bridge" is accompanied by an illustration showing a man standing on a bridge that does not quite reach the far shore. "A Nightly Conversation in a Boat" shows two people huddled together in a boat, the moon hanging low over the horizon. Some full-page illustrations, such as the birds on branches at the beginning of Vol. 2, do not appear to go with any poem. Sumida's introduction is dated 1860, the colophon 1861. Fine set, preserved in a chitsu. Some worming in Vol. 1 and dampstaining in Vols. 2 and 4, occasionally touching illustrations and characters. The wrappers appear to be from the early 20th century, as the verso of Vol. 4 shows part of an advertisement of the period.