\t\t\t\tCharles Nelson Spinks began collecting books when he lived in Japan.\u00a0 He donated over 1,000 books to American University Library in the 1970s.\u00a0 The books cover a variety of subjects including art, history, philosophy, recreation, and travel during the Edo Period of Japan (1603-1868).<\/p>\n
Japanese printed books on secular themes date from about 1600.\u00a0 Some of the earliest books were produced using moveable type but by the middle of the 17th<\/sup> century all commercially produced books were printed from woodblocks.\u00a0 Many of the schools and styles of Japanese art are represented in illustrated books.\u00a0 There are a number of different types of books such as gafu \u2018drawing books\u2019 which were usually produced by a single artist to give didactic examples of his style.\u00a0 Artists could also combine with poets, novelists, and travelers to produce illustrated poetry collections, comic illustrated novels, travel guides and erotic books.\u00a0 Popular titles were probably printed in \u2018editions\u2019 of thousands, and were regularly reprinted if there was demand.\u00a0 Most Japanese books were printed on kozo, paper made from mulberry bark.\u00a0 Rare Japanese books are defined as those predating 1867.\u00a0 Numerous earthquakes and fires over the years and the allied bombing of World War II destroyed many old Japanese libraries.<\/p>\n On display are three examples of illustrated books including a gafu and two examples of albums of woodblock prints.\u00a0 To limit exposure to light, the pages are turned every two months.\u00a0\u00a0 The exhibit will be on display through the end of April 2010.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charles Nelson Spinks began collecting books when he lived in Japan.\u00a0 He donated over 1,000 books to American University Library in the 1970s.\u00a0 The books cover a variety of subjects including art, history, philosophy, recreation, and travel during the Edo Period of Japan (1603-1868). Japanese printed books on secular themes date from about 1600.\u00a0 Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exhibits","category-featured-collections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}