132 - FOUJITA and KOMAKI, Ohmia. A Selection of Poems.

FOUJITA and KOMAKI, Ohmia. A Selection of Poems. Foujita’s very first illustrated book. A beautiful copy on Arches paper, preserved in a charming modern slipcase with a window. Paris, La Belle Édition (Printed by François Bernouard), 1919. In-8 booklet, bound with a raffia cord, color-printed cover with publisher’s vignette, in a modern slipcase (rigid black paper sleeve with a custom-fit insert featuring a burgundy paper background and a Japanese-style fastener, slipped into a wood-grain paper case with a window on the top flap). 20 pages, 12 line drawings reproduced in black within the text. Small, light foxing spots on the cover. First edition and Foujita’s very first illustrated book, featuring 12 reproductions of line drawings printed in black and signed within the artist’s Japanese monogram. One of 205 numbered copies on Arches paper, the only edition printed on large-format paper with 5 sheets of Japanese paper. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968) arrived in Paris in 1913 and settled in Montparnasse, where he befriended Modigliani, Soutine, and Apollinaire. A key figure of the Roaring Twenties, he quickly became one of the most famous artists of the School of Paris. *Quelques poèmes* marked his debut in book illustration. His line drawings, influenced by the purity of the ukiyo-e line, already foreshadowed the technical mastery of his large canvases on “white backgrounds” that would bring him success throughout the 1920s. The free-verse texts, written in French by Ōmi Komaki (1894–1978), draw on the conciseness of haiku to evoke, with melancholy, solitude, nature, and nostalgia for the homeland. After sharing in the bohemian life of the Montparnasse avant-garde, the poet returned to his native region at the end of 1919 and founded the journal *Tane makuku* (*The Sowers*) there, marking the birth of Japanese proletarian literature. A fine copy, presented in a charming slipcase.