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Inro and Other Miniature Forms of Japanese Lacquer Art by Melvin and Betty Jahss

Very thorough 500-page tome - longwinded, even, but it does have as much as anyone could ever want to know about this subject. They are prone to overdoing parallels with and superiorities over the West, for instance in repeated claims that there was an impressionist style in Japanese art (before the Meiji restoration). This is - at best - a ludicrous stretch. (A less bonkers stance might reference post-impressionism and in particular pointillism, but even this would be purposeless.) The book also assumes that its reader knows nothing of Japan and its arts and history, which makes for tedious, overly basic sections. The writers are snobs, in art and class terms, repeatedly insisting on the vulgarity of taste of all but the upper classes.

buy it