Merry Christmas!

from Bibliophemera...

...and Margaret & Nancy!

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Kondo Book Store and U.S. Propaganda in Postwar Japan

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Here is my first Japanese bookstore trade label: The Kondo Book Store in the Ginza section of Tokyo. I found it in a copy of Homecoming , by Jiro Osaragi . It's been languishing for months in a backlog pile. I finally got around to looking at it and got a nice surprise in the form of some interesting history in U.S.-Japanese relations and psychological warfare following World War II. This English translation was a special reprint edition of Knopf's first English translation. Published by Charles E. Tuttle (Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo) in 1955, this edition was sold only in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa. Perhaps someday I'll have trade labels from the stores in Korea and Okinawa that also stocked this book. As the book deals with life in postwar (WWII) Japan, and the publication time frame includes post-Korean War, I can see how the book wound up on the shelves of Kondo Book Store and bookstores in Okinawa and Korea. U.S. occupation of Japan ended in 1952, so my guess is that th...
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How to open a book

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Cataloging books the other day, I came across an 1890s multivolume set called Messages and Papers of the Presidents . Inside one of the volumes was a slip of printed paper with a bookbinder's message: How to Open a Book . The set was published by the Government Printing Office, so they are the likely source of this piece of paper, which reprints a passage from a publication titled, Modern Bookbinding . No other bibliographical detail is included for that title, but I have found a magazine from that era, Modern Bookbinding and Their Designers . No clue, though, as to the author of this particular piece. You might wonder (I did) why there would be a need for instructions to open a book. And if you put those instructions inside the book, doesn't that defeat the purpose somewhat? Opening a book is not as easy as you might think. At least if you read these instructions and try to follow them. Here's the gist of it in the opening run-on sentence: Hold the book with its back on a ...
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Little, Brown & Company

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How is current day (2009) French publisher, Hachette Livre, connected with a post-American Revolution bookstore founded in Boston in 1784 by a man named Ebenezer Battelle? That venerable old Boston publisher, Little, Brown & Company, is the link between the two. They (Charles Little and James Brown) got their start with Carter, Hilliard & Co. (directly or indirectly, as indicated further down), eventual successors to Battelle’s bookstore, and went into business for themselves in 1837. Today, they are one of many publishers comprising French publishing giant Hachette Livre. Here's a billhead for Little, Brown & Company, dated 1892, which I recently acquired. What got my attention on this was the business description underneath the company name: Law Booksellers, Publishers & Importers . Publishers, what they're known for today and for the last half century and more, gets second billing. But the modifier Law is what grabbed my attention. I was ignorant of ...
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