304pp. Text illustrations – 40 headpiece drawings by Chiura Obata. Thin boards with original pictorial wrappers. First Edition. 

Bookplate of Ludovica Graham.  The first renowned Japanese-American artist of the 20th century, Obata Immigrated to the US from Japan as a teenager, worked in San Francisco as an illustrator and a commercial artist for Gumps, then gained fame for the paintings and prints he produced while on a 1927 sketching tour of Yosemite, and as an Art instructor at UC Berkeley from 1932 to 1953  - interrupted by his World War II internment.

George T. Marsh, principal author of this book, was a “wealthy capitalist” who had lived in Japan before becoming San Francisco’s first leading importer of Japanese objet d’art. He built the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park and, as a Bohemian Club literary dilettante, wrote this novel, which foretold Japan’s “aim for world supremacy and power.” Ludovica Simon Graham, who owned this copy, was a shipping heiress from a Baltimore China trade family who maintained a mansion in Pacific Heights – as well as in New York, Boston, Palm Springs and Reno.