SENRYU: JAPANESE SATIRICAL VERSES [SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY]

Tokyo, Japan: Hokuseido Press, 1949. Rare First and only edition of this book. AUTHOR'S SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY: "To M Hashimoto, With the greatest possible gratitude. R H Blyth." Full olive green pictorial cloth with embossed blue lettering to cover and spine. Fold-out color frontispiece with titled tissue-guard. Pictorial endpapers. iv, 230 pp. Extensively illustrated with black-and-white text drawings plus full-page color plates with titled tissue-guards. Discreet prior owner name and evidence of an old bookplate removal else clean and very good in a very good dust jacket with protective mylar cover. Reginald Horace Blyth (1898 - 1964) was an English author, teacher, poet, and friend and student of Zen Buddhism under D. T. Suzuki. As a devotee of Japanese culture Blyth is most famous for his writings on Zen, Haiku poetry, and Senryu. He almost single-handedly popularized Haiku in the West. During the war Blyth was interned as an enemy alien in Japan alongside Robert Aitken. After the war he worked hard to encourage a peaceful dialogue between Japan and the West, and was one of those who drafted Emperor Hirohito's official declaration that he was in fact human and not divine. Blyth died in 1964 and was buried in the cemetery of the Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji Temple in Kamakura, next to his old friend, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. Suzuki described Blyth as "one of the most eminent exponents of Japanese culture." Books inscribed by Blyth are quite rare. . Signed. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good.