![[JAPAN] The Official Railway and Steamboat Traveller's Guide, with General Information for Tourists in Japan.](/sites/default/files/styles/auction_slider/public/images/lots/747/1491747.jpg?itok=oEnILSx3)
Lot Details
Lot 75
[JAPAN] The Official Railway & Steamboat Traveller's Guide, with General Information for Tourists in Japan.
Yokohama: printed and published at the Office of the "Japan Gazette," 1889. Publisher's printed blue card wrappers. 7 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches (18 x 12.5 cm); [xiii, ads and preliminaries], [1]-[79] pp., 21 pp. ads, [3 ff., blank]; two folding maps, for Northern and Central Japan in pocket at rear. About a dozen trade cards and flyers for Japanese merchants are laid-in at the front. Wear to spine extremities, light soiling, defects to the map pocket, still a sound example. Ink gift presentation to front endpapers to Nannie Jenckes Borden (of, dated 1897.
Apparently (and unsurprisingly), this interesting little work is extremely scarce; a handful of copies of the 1890 edition of the guide are located by COPAC and OCLC, and no copies of this earlier 1889 edition. Aimed at the US market (and priced at one dollar), and used by an American traveller, the advertisements and trade cards (presumably assembled by Ms. Borden) demonstrate how a widespread infrastructure for foreign tourists was in place a mere 36 years after the initial opening of Japan by Matthew Perry's squadron. All copies of the 1890 edition have the two railway maps (these lithographed in Tokyo), as here.
C Property of a Massachusetts Gentleman
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