THE BRITISH PRESS AND THE JAPAN-BRITISH EXHIBITION OF 1910. Edited by Hirokichi Mutsu. With a preface by Yonosuke Ian Mutsu and an introduction by William H. Coaldrake. Production: The University of Melbourne: Curzon Press, London. 212 pp., with b/w illustration. Unpriced.

This is an enlarged and clarified facsimile edition of the original four volumes devoted to the 1910 Exhibition and its English press coverage, including the initial paper read by Hirokichi Mutsu before the Royal Society of Arts in London.

From May to October of that year, England swarmed to this piece of transported Japan. Some 8 million made the trip to Shepherd's Bush (on one Sunday in September over half a million showed up) and looked at the more than 2,000 works of art and craft, including many architectural models -- the gate to the Kasuga Shrine, a scale model of the Chokushimon -- as well a Formosan village with a population of 24 and 10 Ainu living in an approximation of their native habitat. There were, in addition, acrobats, drummers, sword dancers, a brass band, magicians and 36 sumo wrestlers.

The occupational nudity of these latter caused some minor offense in Edwardian England -- even though the wrestlers had donned drawers under their skimpy sporting garb -- but in general the Exhibition was very well received and had a lasting effect.