Prince Ito: Biography of Japan's Greatest Statesman by Kengi Hamada

Prince Ito, a biography of Japan's Greatest Statesman
by Kengi Hamaga

SIGNED and inscribed on the front free endpaper "To Dr. Royal N. Chapman / with sincere aloha / Kengi Hamada"

1936, presumed First edition
Tokyo: Sanseido Co., Ltd.

Also contains a loose mimeographed letter dated April 1936 from Kengi Hamada to a Mr. (Charles F.) Loomis - a separate handwritten slip of paper notes the letter as "to Mr. Loomis of the Hawaii IPR, following the Feb. 26 incident." Wikipedia describes this incident: "The February 26 Incident was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan on 26 February 1936. It was organized by a group of young Imperial Japanese Army officers with the goal of purging the government and military leadership of their factional rivals and ideological opponents."

Wikipedia: "Duke Itō Hirobumi (伊藤 博文, 16 October 1841 – 26 October 1909, born as Hayashi Risuke and also known as Hirofumi, Hakubun and briefly during his youth as Itō Shunsuke) was a Japanese politician and statesman who served as the first Prime Minister of Japan. He was also a leading member of the genrō, a group of senior statesmen that dictated Japanese policy during the Meiji era.

A London-educated samurai of the Chōshū Domain and a central figure in the Meiji Restoration, Itō Hirobumi chaired the bureau which drafted the Constitution for the newly formed Empire of Japan. Looking to the West for inspiration, Itō rejected the United States Constitution as too liberal and the Spanish Restoration as too despotic. Instead, he drew on British and German models, particularly the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Dissatisfied with Christianity's pervasiveness in European legal precedent, he replaced such religious references with those rooted in the more traditionally Japanese concept of a kokutai or "national polity" which hence became the constitutional justification for imperial authority. ..."

Condition: Dust jacket is in mylar, with fairly heavy wear--several chips along the upper edge, some general scuffing and light creasing, and front lower flap has been cut. The book itself is in very good condition, the most notable issue being some light foxing/discoloration to the endpapers. There is a small tipped-in slip of paper on the back endpapers in Japanese, presumably from the publishers. The three page letter has the penciled word "Copy" at the top of the first page, and a couple small tears along creases but overall in great condition.