Kotsuji, Abram Setsuzau. The Origin and Evolution of the Semitic Alphabets

(JAPAN).

Kyo Bun Kwan

Tokyo

1937

FIRST EDITION. English text interspersed with Hebrew and other exotic alphabets. Numerous illustrated charts. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR IN HEBREW.

Descended from a long line of Shinto priests, the author Setsuzau Kotsuji (1899-1973) was a Japanese Hebraist and ardent philo-Semite who founded the Institute of Biblical Research at the University of Tokyo. During the Holocaust years Kotsuji greatly assisted the hundreds of rabbis and yeshiva students from Eastern Europe (including the entire Mir Yeshiva) who escaped to Kobe, Japan and later to Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In 1959 Kotsuji formally converted to Judaism in Jerusalem. See his memoir, From Tokyo to Jerusalem: Autobiography of a Japanese Convert (1964).