japan travel

Hardcover. NY, Knopf`, 1st, 2019, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law's sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 228 pages. At the beginning of World War II Cecil Beaton was commissioned by the British government to photograph the home front. He set to work recording both the destruction of the city, and the heroism of Londoners under attack. He conducted a survey of Bomber and Fighter Commands for the RAF, which was published with his own astute commentary. Beaton was an effective propagandist, but his voice, like his photographs, was touchingly elegant. Beaton's wartime work amounted to 7,000 photographs. He traveled through the Western Desert and on to Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, and India, where he photographed the final days of the Raj in New Delhi and Calcutta before joining the Burma campaign. He ended the war deep in Chinese territory where he witnessed the Nationalist resistance to the Japanese. This collection of Beaton's masterful WWII photography captures the home front, the Middle East, arms and vehicle manufacturing in Britain, India, the Burma Campaign, and the war in China. It also includes a chronology placing events in Beaton's life alongside developments in photography, journalism, and the arts; war photography; and world events. His original photographs are reproduced large on the page, alongside his diary extracts, allowing for deep scrutiny and appreciation of the images and their artist.

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 256 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Meals associated with train travel have been an important aspect of railway history for more than a century - from dinners in dining cars to lunches at station buffets to foods purchased from platform vendors. For many travelers, the experience of eating on a railway journey is often a highlight of the trip, a major part of the 'romance of the rails'. Food on the Move focuses on the culinary history of these famous journeys on five continents, from the earliest days of rail travel to the present. The engaging story and vivid illustrations invite readers to discover an array of railway feasts: haute cuisine in the elegant dining carriages of the Orient Express, American steak-and-eggs on the Santa Fe Super Chief, and home-cooked regional foods along the Trans-Siberian tracks. Readers will be tempted to eat their way across Canada's vast interior and Australia's spectacular and colourful Outback; grab an infamous `British railway sandwich' to munch on the Flying Scotsman; snack on spicy samosas on the Darjeeling Himalayan `Toy Train'; dine at high speed on Japan's `Bullet Train'; and sip South African wines in a Blue Train luxury lounge car featuring windows of glass fused with gold dust. Food on the Move focuses on the culinary history of these famous journeys. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 119 pages. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY STANLEY BURNS on the title page. Japanese geisha and courtesans intrigue and fascinate Westerners. During the mid-nineteenth century, Japan opened its doors to the world and became an essential destination for travelers. Tourists desired images of landscapes and traditional Japanese culture, which Japanese photographers provided. They created souvenir albums consisting of hand-colored photographs individually chosen by the tourist. Many are so beautifully painted that they challenge modern sensibilities familiar with color photography. The photographic conventions were inspired by the aesthetics of the noted colored woodblock print medium of ukiyo-e and the privately published surimono. These works depicted the "floating world"--courtesans, geisha, and entertainments--which also were intriguing subject matter for tourists. The beautiful, large photos in this volume give a special insight into the old world of geisha. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 206 pages. Famously unabashed, W. Eugene Smith was photography's most celebrated humanist. As a photo essayist at Life magazine in the 1940s and '50s, he established himself as an intimate chronicler of human culture. His photographs of war and disaster, villages and metropolises, doctors and midwives, revolutionized the role of images in journalism, transforming photography for decades to come. When Smith died in 1978, he left behind eighteen dollars in the bank and forty-four thousand pounds of archives. He was only fifty-nine, but he was flat worn-out. His death certificate read "stroke," but, as was said of the immortal jazzman Charlie Parker, Smith died of "everything," from drug and alcohol benders to weeklong work sessions with no sleep. Lured by the intoxicating trail of people that emerged from Smith's stupefying archive, Sam Stephenson began a quest to trace his footsteps. In Gene Smith's Sink, Stephenson merges traditional biography with rhythmic digressions to revive Smith's life and legacy. Traveling across twenty-nine states, Japan, and the Pacific, Stephenson profiles a lively cast of characters, including the playwright Tennessee Williams, to whom Smith likened himself; the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with whom he once shared a Swiss chalet; the artist Mary Frank, who was married to his friend Robert Frank; the jazz pianists Thelonious Monk and Sonny Clark, whose music was taped by Smith in his loft; and a series of obscure caregivers who helped keep Smith on his feet. The distillation of twenty years of research, Gene Smith's Sink is an unprecedented look into the photographer's potent legacy and the subjects around him. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Gibbings and Co., 2nd Ed., 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 341 pages. Hardcover with blue cloth covers with black and gilt design. An ex-library but aside from spine stickers and bookplate, a remarkably clean, tight copy. Doesn't appear to be a circulating copy. Tales of hunting throughout the world, but mostly in America, from snipe shooting to wolf coursing. Includes several fishing chapters; salmon in Japan, black and striped bass, grey mullet, brook trout and muskies, with a final chapter on artificial stocking of lakes and rivers.

Hardcover. NY, Rizzoli, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrinkwrap. A rare and poignant compilation of photography and written anecdotes by American photographer and artist Lee Jaffe that captures his close friendship, collaboration, and travels with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as they traversed Japan, Thailand, and Switzerland in 1983. Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world's true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens. Basquiat and Jaffe connected over reggae music at a mutual friend's art show. It was the early 1980s in New York, when the art scene was raw, complicated, and thriving, and Jaffe cultivated strong connections with cultural figures such as Basquiat, Bob Marley, and Peter Tosh. "For me, watching him [ Jean] paint reminded me of the times I would sit and play harmonica while Bob Marley, with his acoustic guitar, would be writing songs that were eventually to become classics," Jaffe says. "With Jean and Bob, it seemed like they were channeling inspiration coming from an otherworldly place." This beautiful volume presents snapshots of Basquiat: from the artist smiling on a bullet train to Kyoto and behind-the-scenes documentation of Basquiat creating artwork in St. Moritz, to poignant portraits that mirror his undeniable magnetism. These rare depictions of Basquiat come to life with Jaffe's unforgettable experiences of their friendship, collaborations, and travels detailed in private written memories and anecdotes. This insightful and moving illustrated volume captures the soul of the unedited, ambitious, young artist during the height of his short yet unprecedented artistic career.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, textured beige cloth, moderately soiled. No edition or printing stated on copyright page. Illustrated with 32 pages of b/w photographs, as well as endpaper maps, red and black frontispiece illustration. The story of the trip Auden and Isherwood made to China during its war with Japan, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Includes 32 pages of photographs, as well as several sonnets and one long poem by Auden. Narrative written by Isherwood. There is a tan stain that goes across pages 68-69, that looks like a rorschach test. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Algonquin Young Readers, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 113 pages. Hardcover. Extensive color illustrations by James McMullan throughout. Illustrated paste downs and end papers. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. McMullan explained, "In my late seventies I decided to organize my memories of my childhood before and during the Second World War into a coherent narrative. The tension of our lives when the Japanese army took over our town in China and the subsequent anxieties of traveling from country to country with my mother has imprinted the incidents of those years into my memory with an enduring lucidity that defies the otherwise fading recall of my aging mind."

Hardcover. Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in a white cardboard slipcase, 352 pages. One of the best-known Japanese artists of the international scene, Mariko Mori, born in 1967 in Tokyo, envisions fantastical worlds and beings in spectacular photographs and videos--frequently casting herself amid these scenarios as a Bjork-esque avatar in biomorphic and technological symbiosis. Mori studied fashion design in Tokyo, worked briefly as a model and later studied fine art in England, and this early education is visible in her elaborately produced photographs, videos and sculpture that are as reminiscent of Hollywood as they are of contemporary art. Her recent work involves exotic landscapes, computer-generated images and choreographed performances for which the artist designs her own costumes and plays the central characters.This extraordinary and substantial publication offers a retrospective of Mori's entire oeuvre, and is the first to present the complete Beginning of the End: Past, Present, Future, a photographic cycle produced over a period of 11 years, in which Mori presents herself as a time traveler in a plexiglass capsule at significant symbolic locations, from Giza to New York to Shanghai.

Softcover. Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 159 pages, with 72 illustrations, 52 in color. Light edge wear to wrappers, else a very clean, tight copy. These monotypes are presented by Cecily Langdale in this book which was published in 1984. It contains a brief Biography of the artist that describes his influences, travels and contacts, and a general discussion about Monotypes which summarises their chronology, style and technique. These two essays are illustrated by 28 b/w figures. The monotypes are then presented, in colour, with commentaries on each by Langdale that integrate factual information and artistic significance. Addenda include a further 3 monotypes by the artist and there is a Bibliography of relevant publications. Prendergast executed his last monotypes in 1901-02, probably because of his increased interest on the complexities of oil painting techniques that he continued to explore for the remainder of his life. For anyone unfamiliar with monotypes, the information provided by Langdale is extremely useful to enable a full appreciation of the works presented in this book. The artist used oil paint in the preparation of his monotypes and may have used a spoon to transfer the images onto the Japanese tissue support.

Softcover. Washington DC, National Geographic Society, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Original magazines July - December 1921, in a maroon pebbled hardcover binding. Magazines are dated and paged, with photographs and maps, but do not have covers, advertisements, etc. Several pages of color plates. Includes two folding color maps: South America and the Islands of the Pacific. Also illustrated WWI insignia, 16 pages of Japanese scenes in color. Clean, bright volume.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, The Winchell Co., 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 297 pages, b&w illustrations, in a bright dust jacket. Clean. Helene Iswolsky, daughter of a Russian diplomat, grew up in Japan, Denmark, Russia, and France. In 1911, her father became Russian ambassador to France. She returned to Russia for her debut in 1914, to be presented to the Tsarina Alexandra. While there she attended the wedding of Prince Felix Yusupov, who was to murder Rasputin three years later. After the Tsar was overthrown, her father retired to Biarritz and died there in 1919, leaving unpaid debts. The author took up translating and writing. She had a religious awakening and became a Catholic. A sojourn in a Benedictine monastery left her changed, but she decided not to make the cloister her life. The author knew many notable people in the Paris area, especially writers, poets, critics, philosophers of the "new wave," Christian humanists, and Russian emigres. She attended the Sunday afternoon gatherings of Jacques Maritain and Nicholas Berdiaev, and worked on Emmanuel Mounier's journal "Esprit." When the Nazis occupied France, she escaped to America with her mother. Here she founded an ecumenical movement called "The Third Hour" and taught Russian at Fordham University and other schools. She was a close friend of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. Scarce.

Hardcover. Michigan, Scholarly Publishing Office University of Michigan, Reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 507 pages. Hardcover. Reprint of 1857 J.B. Lippincott & Co. publication produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University's Library's preservation reformatting program. B/w illustrations throughout. Pages clean, spine straight, binding tight. ISBN label on back cover. Light foxing to edges. Blue cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. "Visits to the Malay and Loo-Choo Islands, the Coasts of China, Formosa, Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, and the Mouth of the Amoor River."

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Edward Stern, 1st, 1910, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover with no dust jacket. Illustrated cover boards. Author wrote "The Roosevelt Bears", 7 color plates by C. Twelvetrees. An adventure told in verse about a little boy, Prince Domino. He and his siamese cat, who is very smart indeed, travel to far-off lands where they are helped by a little black and a little Japanese boy (the depictions of whom are slightly stereotypical). Moderate wear to front and rear cover. Loose binding. Light soil. Rear hinge torn half way up from bottom.

Hardcover. New York, George Braziller, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, Unpaginated. Color and black & white photography. British artist Long ( Walking in Circles ) takes nature treks--in England's Lake District, the Sahara, Japan, Nepal--and creates site-specific works along the way. He fashions a mud circle in the river Avon, traces a line of snow near a temple in Kyoto and erects a circle of stones on a Swiss mountainside. The spare, deeply meditative photographs that he took en route sometimes call to mind prehistoric British megalithic monuments or Native American earthworks, as if he wants to tune in on planetary patterns of energy. At other times Long simply records what he sees, providing dramatic vistas of Iceland's vast rolling hills, Bolivia's high plateau, Washington's forests and Mount Everest's calm majesty. His images, poetic captions and unobstrusive siteworks reflect an artist who is at once traveler, nature-lover and adventurer.

Softcover. NY, Burns Archive Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 106 pages, color plates throughout. SIGNED/INSCRIBED BY STANLEY BURNS on the title page. Japan, an island nation isolated until the mid-nineteenth century, opened its doors to foreign photographers in the 1860s. These photographers presented a visual cultural kaleidoscope of Japanese life to an eager outside world. The 160 photographs in this volume are curated from tourist albums and presented in the typical sequence. The modern reader will experience Meiji Japan in the way of a nineteenth century armchair traveler. While photographers in other countries were marketing sepia-toned prints, photographers in Japan took advantage of local artists and had their prints exquisitely painted. As with all hand-rendered artworks, quality varied; many photographs were executed so well as to challenge modern color photography. Photographers were limited by government restrictions and many scenes were set in studios rather than in real life. Despite the limitations, tourists visiting the country could purchase albums filled with colorful renditions of Japan's peoples and places. The carefully staged and approved photographs promoted an idealized and romanticized vision of Meiji Japan. Modernization and industrialization changed the country dramatically and the last vestiges of the disappearing feudal culture are captured by the camera. These intriguing photographs are beautiful multi-media artworks representing a vanished world. Clean copy.

Softcover. Tokyo, Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 111 pages. Japanese photographer on the road from Xi'an to Kashi and back again. Color throughout.

Hardcover. London, John Murray, 2nd Ed., 1889, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth stamped in gilt, a little rubbed and bumped at edges. 456 pages with color frontispiece map, 139 illustrations of which 27 are full-page and 14 maps of which some are folding. School ex-library copy with spine label, minimal stamping to front endpapers and title page. Previous owner's inscription on half-title page. Interior clean with no marking, all fold-out maps in great condition. NOTE: The Marchesa a schooner yacht sailed from England in 1881 to the seas of China and Japan the East Indies and New Guinea before returning to England in 1884. First published in 1886 as a two volume set.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 294 pages, b&w photos. Sam Kleiner's The Flying Tigers uncovers the hidden story of the group of young American men and women who crossed the Pacific before Pearl Harbor to risk their lives defending China. Led by legendary army pilot Claire Chennault, these men left behind an America still at peace in the summer of 1941 using false identities to travel across the Pacific to a run-down airbase in the jungles of Burma. In the wake of the disaster at Pearl Harbor this motley crew was the first group of Americans to take on the Japanese in combat, shooting down hundreds of Japanese aircraft in the skies over Burma, Thailand, and China. At a time when the Allies were being defeated across the globe, the Flying Tigers' exploits gave hope to Americans and Chinese alike. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, National Geographic Society, 1924, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth covers with black spine labels with gilt lettering. Six issues from the first half of 1924, 696 pages devoid of ads or inserts. Clean, bright pages, some color, mostly b&w. Include:s 1, Lost Tribes of Islam, Eastern Darfur; 2, Carthage Acheology; 3, Sahara by Automobile; 4, Hawaiian Islands; 5, Sakurajima, Japan volcanic eruption; 6, Norway; and 7, Tunisia. Clean, no markings. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Hobart Company, 1st, 1904, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in orange and black. Three introductory pages of text; balance of book consists entirely of 77 black and white photographs with descriptive captions. Plates showing temples, traditional Japanese residences and businesses, Japanese people at work and at play, a karuma carriage, Yokohama Bay, etc. Clean, bright copy.