Prewar Japanese monthly sports magazines were known for their beautiful photo graphics sections, consisting solely of large photos and captions. These pictorial essays were printed on high quality paper stock and were generally found at the front of each issue. The 18 to 24 page monthly photo spreads contained full page, half page and quarter page photos of the top names in both American and Japanese sports during that era, with a strong emphasis on baseball. As a special offer, the publisher sometimes sold perfect bound annual picture editions consisting of all the graphics section photos and captions that had appeared in the magazine that year.

The volume offered here is a 1931 pictorial review of the year in sports. It contains hundreds of photos of American Major League and Japanese Big Six university players and teams. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and many other U.S. Hall of Famers are portrayed a number of times. Several photos are taken from the U.S. All Star 1931 Japan Tour. Other sports such as boxing, tennis and swimming are also included. The result is a remarkable vision of sports as it occurred more than 85 years ago.

Size: 7 1/4" x 10". 260 pages.

Condition: The cover and some of the early pages are dog-eared. However, the quality of the photos and the paper stock more than compensate for these defects. The binding is tight. Overall Vg/Ex to Ex.