Search Results: seiko kaikoku heidan military defense of by hayashi shihei

Many woodcut illus., some full-page & double-page. Ten columns per page; 20 characters per column. Eight vols. 8vo, orig. blue (now partly faded to pale green) patterned wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, new stitching. Japan: Prefaces dated 1786; title-page with the date "1854." A privately printed edition of this famous text and an extremely rare example of a mokkatsujiban (a movable wooden type Japanese book printed after 1653; for a fascinating discussion, see Kornicki, The Book in Japan, pp. 159-63). Hayashi (1738-93), was a Japanese scholar and a specialist in military affairs. In 1777, he travelled to Nagasaki, where he was greatly impressed by the size and strength of the Dutch ships. While there, he also learned of the Russian intentions to advance south from Siberia into Asia. This prompted him to go to the northernmost island of Hokkaido to study the situation. As a result of this journey, he became alarmed at the weakness of Japan's coastal defenses and… Read More