TADA, Keiichi. Nankyoku Tanken Jitsuroku [in Englis...

8vo (181 x 127 mm). 6 full-page plates from photographs. Original pictorial stiff paper boards with the image of the “Kainan-Maru” on upper cover, lower cover with the drawing of a penguin by Tada (spine gently sunned, some light spotting to lower cover, else fine).

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY TADA to Mr. Manabu (or Gaku) Awayama. Tada was looked upon as Shirase’s right-hand man and served as the secretary for the Japanese Antarctic Expedition. He and Shirase came to odds during the expedition, and Tada jumped ship during the Japanese Antarctic Expedition’s return in 1912. Tada returned quickly to Tokyo and published two accounts before the expedition’s official account was published. Tada later established Kainan Tanken Kyokai, the Kainan Exploration Society (“Kainan” translates “develop the Antarctic”), to perpetuate Japanese Antarctic exploration. Unlike Shirase, Tada had won the support of the Japanese government, and he organized an Antarctic expedition with the Ministry of Agriculture. But that was 1940, and with the onset of Japan’s involvement in World War II, plans for an Antarctic expedition had to be curtailed. Tada died in 1959 having authored five books. The first two were early unauthorized narratives of the Japanese Antarctic Expedition (see Ross 1.2 and 1.3); two other publications were Tada’s autobiography (see Ross 2.1.1) and a record of his explorations in Borneo (Ross 1.10.1A); and the last is this late-in-life recounting of the Japanese Antarctic Expedition published a year before his death. Ross 1.9.1 (“Rare”).