Hokubei Nenkan [in Japanese characters]. The North American Times. 1936 Edition Year Book

[Seattle, 1935. Near fine.. [2],[84],3,113,[4],324,[12]pp. Text mostly in Japanese. Original dark green limp leatherette, titles stamped in gilt on front cover, in original plain cardboard slipcase with black spine titles. Very minor wear to binding. Modest wear and light soiling to slipcase. Internally clean. The last edition of the scarce yearbooks (previously issued sporadically beginning in 1910) issued by The North American Times, the largest and oldest Japanese-American daily newspaper in the Pacific Northwest. The NAT began in 1902 and was halted by the internment of its staff (and most of its readership) in 1942. After World War II, the newspaper was restarted as The North American Post, and is still published today. The bulk of the present volume is a directory of Japanese-American businesses and Japanese-American residents primarily in Washington, but also Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada, California, Wyoming, Utah, the territory of Alaska, Illinois, New York, and Canada. The names are given in Japanese characters, but the street addresses are provided in English. The California list is surprisingly small, and there is no mention of Hawaii, likely because there was an annual directory published for the Hawaiian islands by the Nippu Jiji Company. The present work is also chock full of illustrated advertisements interspersed throughout, almost all of which pertain to businesses in Seattle. The work opens with a lengthy photographically-illustrated section featuring scenes in the Japanese community, with group photographs of various Japanese organizations, clubs, sports teams, and the like. There are also several pages featuring portraits of Japanese-American business and community leaders, family portraits, the interiors and exteriors of Japanese-owned businesses, farm and nursery scenes, church and school groups, and more.

A scarce Japanese-American directory, with only a baker's dozen copies reported in OCLC -- six in a separate record for the 1936 edition, with copies at Yale, Lewis & Clark College, Tacoma Public Library, Seattle Public Library, the Bancroft, and UCLA, plus seven copies in a serial record, at Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, the Library of Congress, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, and the University of British Columbia.