夏季讀本 Kaki Tokuhon (Summer Reader) (6 vols. complete)
Honolulu, T.H. [Japan]: ホノルル教育會/ Honolulu Kyoiku Kai (Honoruru Kyoikukai), 1937-1940. First edition. Softcover. Octavos. Vol.1: [1] 55pp. Vol.2: [1] 59pp. Vol.3: [4] 58pp. [1]. Vol.4: [4] 56pp. [1]. Vol.5: [4] 58pp. Vol.6: [2] 60pp. Original multicolored illustrated wrappers, with red lettering on the front covers. Spines reinforced with library buckram tape. A collection comprised of the complete run of the now extremely scarce series of summer readers, produced for Japanese-American elementary school children in Hawaii. Profusely illustrated throughout with multicolored images to accompany the Japanese text. All cover and interior illustrations printed finely in an interesting combination of offset and lithographic printing. Content throughout includes scenes of daily life in Hawaii, including in the domestic setting, animals, children's adventures, and Japanese folk tales. Japanese text throughout is printed in green and blue, including Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, for reading comprehension, with blank spaces to fill out questions. All readers are unused.
Wrappers with minor rubbing to extremities. Back wrappers of volumes with light sunning, and occasional minor smudges. Back wrapper of vol.1 with a small stain to the upper right corner. Back wrapper of vol.2 with a small chip at the top right corner. Interiors quite clean, with book blocks tight. Wrappers in very good- to very good+, interiors in near fine condition overall. All volumes protected in modern mylar. vg- to near fine. Item #51159
Alternate translation: Summer Reading Book
As part of a larger swath of nativist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiments and trends in the United States from the late 19th-early 20th century, Japanese-language education was targeted. Asian immigration in the United States was seen suspiciously by many at the time and was related to the sociopolitical concept of the so-called "yellow peril". In the late teens and early 1920s a number of states and territories across the county enacted legislation restricting Japanese-language education. A 1920 report by the Federal Commission of Education declared that the 20,000 students of Hawaii's 163 Japanese schools were being "retarded in accepting American customs, manners, ideals, principles, and standards," and recommended the schools be taken over by the public education system. The Hawaiian Territorial Legislature passed the Gaikokugo Gakko Torishimari-ho (Foreign Language School Prohibition Law) in 1920 and the Gakunen Tanshuku Kitei (the School-year Reduction Law) in 1922, severely limiting Japanese instruction. The most prominent publisher of Japanese textbooks in Hawaii at that point, the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai (established in 1916) found itself in crisis. A group of schools who contested the law broke away and formed the Honolulu Kyoiku Kai during this time. In 1927, these and other similar laws were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. At this point Hawaii Kyoiku Kai began functioning again. Japanese-language education entered a period of relative stability, until the Bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Bibliographic resources: Japanese Language School Textbook collection at the University of Hawaii; Densho Encyclopedia.
Price: $3,750.00