"Breasts and Navels of Japan"

"Breasts and Navels of Japan" by Kodai Yamada, in Japanese, 1924, Hattori Kenzo Shoten Publishing, Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, softcover, 436 pages, 208 black and white unaccredited photographs with numerous charts and graphs. Completely puzzling book, ostensibly a socio-anthropological study, in fact a bunch of pretentious nonsense. The author does not explain the scientific reason that set him out to determine if Japanese social trends are influenced by the shape and size of women's breasts or the shape of their umbilicus (navel). There are eleven chapters describing in detail how the data was collected and categorized. Yamada's conclusions are more like suppositions and his theories are more like presumptions, but they are elaborately and bombastically presented in the last chapter which is pure crap. The statistics show insignificant variations in breast size by geographical area, level of income, education and occupation none of which has any relationship to or influence on Ikigai (the Japanese way of life).The pictures of women's naked torsos are grainy, black and white and very clinical images that really made me sad. Notwithstanding this, the book sold exceedingly (and undeservedly) well: within the next few years there were five reprints of ever increasing runs.   

I read and reviewed this volume as part me cataloguing and creating an inventory of the books found as part of the "The Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation" (see first entry of this blog).