Author: Shimizuya Tsunejiro (publisher).
Title: [Wayo Shitai Iroha].
Description: Tokyo? Shimizuya Tsunejiro mid 19th century. Woodcut in three colours 37x25cm. An excellent copy. ¶ This elegant table teaches how to write hiragana phonetically with the English or romanised alphabet - what was to become romaji. The Portugese missionaries had formulated a romanised system so that missionaries could instruct their Japanese victims without having to learn how to read Japanese but once they were tossed out of Japan such a system was quickly forgotten. It was only with the opening of Japan followed by the Meiji restoration and orders from the top that modernisation must follow that making Japanese intelligible to westerners became a desirable skill.In the bottom left corner are numbers.

Keywords: linguistics language education social sciences c19th Japan Asia woodcuts