An excellent collaboration between poet, artist and publisher: Serizawa’s illustrations for Sato Haruo’s poetic story, specially produced by art book publisher Gohachi.
The author, Sato Haruo (1892–1964) was a celebrated novelist, poet and literary critic. His story, Gokuraku kara kita ‘From Paradise’ was originally serialised in the Asahi newspaper from 22 June to 12 December 1960 with illustrations by Serizawa. From Paradise recounts the life of the historic figure Honen (1133–1212), who founded the Jodo-shu school of Pure Land Buddhism. Sato recounts the famous story of Honen’s life in a poetic style of writing.
To mark their collaboration, Serizawa worked with Gohachi to produce a privately printed book of his illustrates, which were stencil-printed and bound into a limited edition of 100 books the year after the Asahi newspaper series. A much larger format than the narrow strip of the newspaper column, the present book allowed Serizawa’s 173 stencil illustrations to be enjoyed in fantastic detail. Additionally, since the original newspaper reproduced the illustrations in black and white, through this book readers were able to see Serizawa’s unique vision of how each could be coloured.
Provenance: the previous owner has carefully kept one of the original booklet which notes all the names of the recipients and the number they received in the edition. The books were not numbered in the typical way, but with characters from a Buddhist sutra, each one denoting a copy in the edition. The present copy is no.18, numbered with the character shu or ‘crowd’, which we learn from the booklet belonged to Moriguchi Taro (dates unknown), a collector based in Osaka. Some collectors would order the book and ask for a paulownia wood box to come with it, which Serizawa would sign. Serizawa wrote the title on the lid and signed the inside with his name and date “Showa 38 Spring”.
Very rare. Only 1 copy outside of Japan listed in OCLC (UC Berkeley).
