First edition, inscribed. Woodblock printed throughout with numerous illustrations. 190 by 128mm. Fukuro-toji binding, original printed paper wrappers in black and navy, corners slightly bumped, internally crisp, a very good copy. Unpaginated [18]pp. Tokyo, Hangaso, Showa 9 [i.e, 1934.
A charming book drawing on Kawakami's experience as an English teacher. This particular copy is inscribed to Suzuki Kenji (dates unknown).
Composed of 15 lessons, each page is neatly designed to include a English phrase, small vignette and a Japanese translation written phonetically, and the endpapers are printed with a table for counting. What is very nice about this book, and perhaps why it is titled the 'Strange Reader', is the use of antiquated Japanese. For example, the first sentence "I am a man" is translated to "Yo wa danshi nari" which would be very odd language to use today or indeed in 1934 when the book was published.
Only one copy in OCLC (National Diet Library Tokyo). There is no limitation on the book, so it is not clear how many copies were printed.
