Author: Kurita Jiro. (illustrator).
Title: [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Shokumotsu] .
Description: Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this a bit browned and smudged); colour and b/w illustrations throughout by Kurita. Some browning. ¶ This is volume 7 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to food. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

Keywords: science technology food education children juvenile c20th Japan Asia modernism progress