An extraordinarily rare Kawakami Sumio title, being one of only 8 special copies, with a postcard from the artist to a collector.
The word 'haraiso' derives from the Portuguese word for paradise, 'paraiso'. In Kawakami's book, he tells the story of man who visits Paradise, much like the Paradiso of Dante's Divine Comedy. In the first plate the man, wearing the cross on his back and carrying a rosary, is greeted by a choir of angels. He then meets the angel Gabriel and joins Jesus Christ himself for a feast. Surrounded by roses, three angels bearing instruments (a harp and two lutes) play sweet music. He notes there are no friends to gamble with, or women to have fun with. When he peers out past the roses and into the abyss, he sees the Devil and his companions gambling amid the flames of Hell. In the final page the man's rosary is thrown away and he follows two demons towards Hell, asking, where is the back gate of Paradise?
One of the more unusual elements of this book is the use of romanised Japanese. This is similar to the 1592 Jesuit Mission Press edition of Aesop's Fables, or the 'Feiqe Monogatari' (British Library, 59.aa.1), which transliterates contemporary colloquial Japanese using the roman alphabet. Kawakami, making his book over 300 years later, uses the same convention. This makes the book somewhat challenging to read, as there are no hints as to which kanji characters apply.
Of the 50 copies printed, the first 8 were special copies. Under the shimmery dust jacket, a fabulous binding is revealed. Kawakami printed and hand-coloured onto book cloth an image of three male figures in Western dress: one with a sword, one holding a pipe and wearing a cape adorned with the cross and another wearing a mask and gloves. This motif does not appear in the remaining 42 copies. The present copy includes a loosely inserted print, which was the design used on the binding of the 42 other copies.
The present copy is accompanied by a postcard from Kawakami to a collector named Kitazawa Shikasaburo (dates unknown). Though we do not learn much about Kitazawa from the postcard, his name appears in the Gohachi edition of Kawakami Sumio's bookplates (Kawakami Sumio Shohyo Sakuhin-shu, 1950), as he had designed a custom bookplate for Kitazawa. In the postcard, Kawakami writes that he encloses the 7th copy of the special edition. He updates Kitazawa on the publication of a different book about bookplates, and mentions a mutual contact named Hatsuyama, who appears to be behind schedule with the project. It is possible that he is referring to Hatsuyama Shigeru (1897-1973) who was an artist in Kawakami's circle. The two featured side by side in a number of bookplate anthologies made at the time.
Rare. No copies in OCLC. N.b. There is one copy in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, which is number 29 of 50. The binding is different, as it is not one of the special eight that were made with the printed cloth binding.
