AMERICANS in JAPAN c. 1950s PHOTO ALBUM

Item #871

9 1/2” x 11 1/2” x 1 1/2”; 20 leaves/40 pages, black, plus decorative grey end papers
Front cover completely detached; back cover attached but stripped of protective/decorative layer, as is spine; both covers worn all around.
All pages, by contrast, fully intact, attached, in excellent condition, with neither tears nor folds; some minor chipping of the first few pages.

Inside front cover has a photo-portrait of a young Japanese girl wrapped in exquisite kimono - possibly royalty.
Facing the photo on the end paper - seven autographs, in English, of Japanese names.

There are seventy-one black and white photos, all in excellent condition, pasted to the page.

Most photos measure 3 1/16” x 4 7/16” (including white borders) - with many exceptions - usually, two photos to a page
End papers and inside covers utilized for photos - except both inside endpapers
Black pages 8 7/8” x 11 1/8” - finely ridged all around

The photos are so well laid out and squarely pasted that, given the addition of the introductory signatures, leads one to conclude that this album was presented as a farewell gift to one of the visiting delegates/professors: very likely the rotund, bespectacled fellow featured in many of the shots, clearly treated with great honor, and often the only American. The album itself was clearly splendid when new and has been poorly stored/shuffled in the intervening decades.

This was perhaps a convocation of Christians, or, more likely, academics, or possibly government officials. There are many photos of a campus, but no dates. A few snapshots in an envelope have names and places written on the verso, otherwise, there are no captions. There are two photos that are stamped with a Sendai (northern Honshu) dateline. The delegates are shown in a classroom, playing baseboru, sitting around a Franklin stove, visiting a petting zoo, visiting shrines and gardens, walking along a city’s riverfront, and attending a tea ceremony.

There are many group photos, of mostly Japanese with a few Americans. One shows a high-ranking American officer, but these photographs were clearly taken some years after the conclusion of the war. The album ends as it began: with a photo of a person in traditional costume - this time, a young woman in a beautiful kimono, followed by a couple of snaps of official-looking buildings.

Price: $250.00