JAPANESE LIFE AND CHARACTER IN SENRYU

Fine copy in full brown linen cloth in a fine dust jacket with protective mylar cover, housed in the original and rare publisher's cardstock slipcase titled in black with publisher's seal on back. Decorated endpapers, color frontispiece with titled tissue-guard. viv, 630pp. illustrated with 17 plates, each with titled tissue-guards. "Senryu enable us, as they enabled the Japanese, to understand and forgive others, and, what is vastly more important, to understand and forgive ourselves. Not only the life and character of the Japanese, but our own life and character are to be seen in this book, which is thus not merely a picture, but a mirror. Look well in it!" - from the dust jacket. Reginald Horace Blyth (1898 1964) was an English author, teacher, poet, and friend and student of Zen Buddhism under D. T. Suzuki. As a devotee of Japanese culture Blyth is most famous for his writings on Zen, Haiku poetry, and Senryu. He almost single-handedly popularized Haiku in the West. During the war Blyth was interned as an enemy alien in Japan alongside Robert Aitken. After the war he worked hard to encourage a peaceful dialogue between Japan and the West, and was one of those who drafted Emperor Hirohito's official declaration that he was in fact human and not divine. Blyth died in 1964 and was buried in the cemetery of the Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji Temple in Kamakura, next to his old friend, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. Suzuki described Blyth as "one of the most eminent exponents of Japanese culture." See photos.…