[Japanese Textbook]. Approved by the California State Board of Education

[San Francisco & Japan: Aoki Taisei-Do, 1929. Very good.. [56]pp. In Japanese. Original printed, stiff wrappers, cloth-backed. Minor wear and scattered staining to wraps. Light tanning internally. A fascinating and scarce Japanese-language textbook, intended for use by Japanese-American children in California during the late 1920s. The work was published by Aoki Taisei-Do, a San Francisco book and stationery store that catered to Japanese immigrants. The inside, rear wrapper states that this was was, "Approved by the California State Board of Education. August 1923. Published Aoki Taisei-do. San Francisco California. Printed in Japan, together with a 1929 date code. The book contains numerous illustrations throughout of young children, animals, plants, and more accompanied by Japanese text, and seems to have been a primer for learning to read and write Japanese for children born to immigrants in the United States. A illustration of Santa Claus and one of a English teatime table setting belie a bit of Western influence. Despite the printed discrepancy between approval and publication dates, we locate no other editions and only one copy of the present one, at the Bancroft.