The Cultivation of Bamboos in Japan was published by Sir Ernest Satow in 1899. The color lithographs are masterfully rendered and printed. Scans provided below at approximately actual size; the black border line is 4.75" by just shy of 7.25" on all plates (121x185mm).

Ernest Mason Satow was by all indications an interesting fellow. From Wikipedia: "Satow was an exceptional linguist, an energetic traveller, a writer of travel guidebooks, a dictionary compiler, a mountaineer, a keen botanist (chiefly with F.V. Dickins) and a major collector of Japanese books and manuscripts on all kinds of subjects before the Japanese themselves began to do so."

Bamboos was published at the tail end of his second (and shorter) stint as a British official in Japan. In 1899, Japan was still in the early stages of communication with Europe, and avenues of trade were only just being explored. Satow wrote this book with an eye toward the growing market for bamboo in British gardens: "My object in preparing this paper has not been to give an account of the uses to which the dry cane may be turned, but rather to supply information that may be useful to cultivators of the living plant, and in some cases to furnish the means of determining the right nomenclature of those already introduced into our home gardens and parks." As such, the plates show leaves, sheathes and stems of living specimens, labeled with Latin scientific names as well as Japanese common names; the text features Japanese characters alongside phonetic equivalents. Though in this case the subject matter is somewhat obscure, it nonetheless demonstrates Satow's value as a capable bridge between Japanese and English cultures, environments and languages at a time when such translators were still scarce.

Adding further interest to this particular volume, the title page is inscribed by a certain G. P. Rixford, or Gulian Pickering Rixford, pictured in this 1930 obituary hovering in the midst of the California-grown avocados to which (along with figs, etc) he devoted a significant portion of his long life. Upon Rixford's death in 1930, at 92, in a train accident, he bequeathed his papers and books to the California Academy of Sciences, where this volume remains.

The following scans are approximately 1-1.5mb each, scanned roughly full size at 300dpi.