[Rarebooks] The Nightless City

[Deborah Paley]

DE BECKER, JOSEPH ERNEST

The Nightless City, or the "History of the Yoshiwara Yukwaku"

by an English student of sociology. 

Yokohama, Z.P. Maruya & Co. Ltd., 1899. Pp. (vi), iv, (2), 441, (3), xix, (3). With 20 plates including 9 colored (7 chromolithographs), and many textual illustrations. Publisher's pictorial blue cloth, tooled in gilt. Flyleaf detached. First edition of this detailed work about the Geisha quarters in Tokyo. This extraordinarily beautiful book graphically describes the floating world and its organization, manners and ceremonies as well as its legal and medical customs and constraints. Fine condition, except for loose flyleaf which has a handwritten message taped to it.

This copy bears the ex libris of Willard C.Tyler, Tokio, 1900. Tyler affixed a handwritten message to the flyleaf of the book:

"Tokio, Febry, 1900. 

This book is one of the rare books of the world. But 500 copies were ever printed, and the type was then distributed. The pages were never stereotyped, so there will be no more, ever. The author is an Englishman who was for many years interpreter to the British legation in Tokio. He married a Japanese woman. 

W.C.T. 

This book is not to be loaned."



Price: US$ 1800.00 



 

Conrad, Joseph

The Rescue. A romance of the shallows

Garden City: Doubleday, Page 1920. 1st American ed., blue cloth, v.g. no d/j. 

Price: US$ 90.00