SERIZAWA (Keisuke)
Shinpan ehon don kihote zen sanju-ichi zu • shuku-satsu [New edition: Picture Book of Don Quixote with all 31 plates • shrunken edition]
Serizawa's pocket-sized Don Quixote
The “shrunken” edition of Serizawa’s great collaboration with Gohachi, Shinpan ehon don-kihote [New edition: Picture Book of Don Quixote].
The very first edition of Serizawa’s interpretation of the Don Quixote was published in 1936 in a limited edition of 75 copies. This was a career-defining work for Serizawa, which established him as an accomplished book-maker on top of the katazome textile dyeing he was known for. Owing to the success of this book, Serizawa collaborated with the art book publisher Gohachi to produce a new edition 40 years later, in 1976. This was a much larger-scale production (physically and in the number of copies), for which Serizawa made entirely new illustrations. Made two years later in 1978, in the afterword to the present publication it is noted that owing to the popularity of the 1976 edition, they decided to produce another, much smaller edition.
This brings us to this extremely sweet, small version of Serizawa’s new edition of Don Quixote. The plates are the same, but they have been scaled down and printed in black and white, with hand-colouring applied on top. Additionally, the text has been expanded. While the larger copy simply has the title next to each plate, the present edition has a bit more text explaining the story in more detail. The colophon notes that the book uses special shinano paper, and that it was printed by Hagiwara Takeshi and coloured by Yamada Otoshichi.
Very rare. 4 copies listed in non-Japanese institutions.
