On the first inside page of this softcover Japanese school book is an inscription from E. Okada at the Shijonawate Police Station in Osaka to Lieutenant Fulton, "In memory of goodbye," dated January 15, 1946--shortly after the end of the WWII and beginning of Allied occupation. It seems a bit of an unusual gift for a Japanese police officer (one assumes) to give an American lieutenant, but perhaps a friendship between the two was rooted in both having school aged children. In any event, while there are some references to the war mixed in, and it definitely provides a subtext, what I really love about this "drawing book" is the many crafty activities it portrays, from making cut and folded paper chairs and tables and houses, to drawing animal masks, to constructing acrobats and dogs from scraps of wood, to coloring grid patterns, to making paper planes. All with great graphics, and every other page printed in color. Plus some drawings of traditional Japanese life and iconography mixed in.
8 3/8" x 6"; 28 pages and in very good condition.
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