This is the sixth part of the successful Edition Synapse series (available outside Japan from Routledge) which provides art historians and students with the primary-source materials related to the Western reception of Japanese arts from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
This collection brings together for the first time the works by Félix Régamey, a leading artist and book illustrator of the Japonism movement in France. Régamey first came to Japan with Emile Guimet in 1876 and together they travelled around Japan and published Promenades japonaises, with Régamey’s illustrations of Japanese life and manners throughout the book. Régamey’s passion for Japan never diminished after the trip and he began to publish his own books about Japan, many of which were fully decorated by his illustrations. This collection includes all of his six books related to the Japanese. They are reproduced in facsimile reprint format with colour illustrations. Okoma, one of those six and renowned as one of the most beautiful ‘Japonism’ books of the period, is reprinted here with all pages in full colour.