Beikoku no Katei Oyobi [American Family and Society]

Tokyo: Kinkodo, 1908. Very good.. [4],7,331,[4]pp., plus four leaves of plates with halftone photographs. Original green cloth, stamped in red, blue, and gold. Light wear at edges; some rubbing to boards, a bit heavier along spine; hinges started. Light tanning internally. A book describing American social and household customs, written by a Japanese journalist who spent several years in the United States. As a student writing about experiences in America, Mori mostly describes New York and New England; in the introduction he professes not to know much about the West or the South. Mori (1870–1955) attended Yale's graduate school from 1901 to 1904, but may have come to the United States prior to that date. When he returned to Japan after Yale, he worked for the newspapers Osaka Jiji Shimpo and Toyo Shimpo. A quite rare work and an interesting view of American society in the first decade of the 20th century from a Japanese perspective. OCLC locates only one copy, at the National Diet Library in Japan, and none in American institutions.