Author: Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi.
Title: [Kogengaku Saishu (Moderunorojio)].
Description: Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1931 (Showa 6). Quarto publisher's cloth blocked in red and white (spine a little rubbed), rather browned but solid illustrated slipcase; [2],323pp, photo illustrations, hundreds of line drawings and diagrams (one with colours added), endpaper map. A few blotches and small flaws, quite good. ¶ First edition of the companion to the 'Modernologio' of the previous year - together they are the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida here collect data to extend their extraordinary encyclopaedia of the people of modern Tokyo. Their thesis was that those who do the planning, designing and building know nothing of what people actually do, what they own and how they use those things - how they live and who they are. I can't imagine anything you might ever think about and a lot you would never think about that isn't collected here. How you walk, where you walk, what you carry, how you carry it, where you dance, how you dance, how you sit, where your shelves are and what's on them, in your cupboards ...

Keywords: architecture town planning urbanism ethnology modernology c20th theory Japan modernism reform progress meiji