Official Guide to Eastern Asia: Trans-continental Connections between Europe and Asia, Prepared by Imperial Japanese Government Railways

This is a facsimile reprint in five volumes of the first editions.

The most important publication which the imperial Japanese government published to promote Japan to the West.

This official guide to Japan and East Asia was planned by Shimpei Goto (a leading statesman in the early twentieth century) when he was the first director of South Manchuria Railway Company in 1906 after he had discovered the incompleteness and inaccuracy of the information in the Japanese and Asian guides produced by Western publishers like John Murray and Baedeker. When he became Minister of Communications and the head of the Railway Bureau (Tetsudoin), the imperial government provided a huge sum for this publishing project and employed many journalists, authors, and photographers. It took nearly ten years to complete the five-volume series.

The series soon acquired an international reputation for its accuracy and the extent of the descriptive information of all Japanese regions and East/South-East Asia, and for their lavish illustrations, and excellent maps.

This reprint edition includes all illustrations (some in colour) and maps (in over 100 foldouts). The original format (published in a portable small format with very thin fragile papers) has been enlarged by 30% for ease of use in today’s libraries.