Mitsuko, Ono.

The Camphor Tree’s Story. Japanese Text. Illustrated by Fuyuji Yamanaka.

No Place, No Publisher, No Year. 21.1 cm x 24.4 cm. 31 pages. With many colour illustrations throughout. Original Hardcover with dustjacket. Very good+ condition with only minor signs of external wear. Only minor dampstain to a few pages throughout. With ephemera of a typed translation from Japanese into English by ‘Erik and Masako Haugaard’. From the reference library of Hans Christian Andersen-Translator Erik Haugaard. The book is inscribed by the illustrator Fuyuji Yamanaka.

A poignant illustrated Japanese short story about an old Camphor tree in Hiroshima; a silent witness to the happenings on that fateful day.

″I wrote this story a long time ago; it is the shortest of my works but the one which has had most readers. Many people have asked me if the camphor tree really exists. It does. When I see it through the window of the bus, I cannot help feeling that that tree saw everything, that it must know so much. But a camphor tree cannot speak and therefore I wrote it’s story. Mr. Fuyuji Yamanaka has illustrated it.

What I heard on the evening of August 6th was not the songs of the little mother. I was myself then a schoolgirl, dressed in my school uniform. What I heard was a woman crying, screaming like a person who had become insane. She was the wife of one of the richest men in our village. She had escaped from Hiroshima, but lost her little son in that burning town”. (Ono Mitsuko- Translated by prev. owners Erik and Masako Haugaard)

• Keywords: Children’s Books Rare · Erik Haugaard Collection of Children’s Literature · Hiroshima · Illustrated · Illustrated Books · Illustrated Children’s Books · Illustration · Japanese
• Language: Japanese
• Inventory Number: 200289AB

EUR 175,--