Sentetsu sōdan 先哲叢談. Sentetsu sōdan kōhen 先哲叢談後編 / Hara Nensai 原念齋 (Zen 善), 1774-1820, author, and Hara Tokusai 原德齋, ed.

6 woodblocks, carved on both sides to print 12 leaves of Hara Nensai's 原念齋 (1774-1820) work Sentetsu sōdan 先哲叢談 (Serialized accounts of earlier wise men), a collection of biographies of Japanese Confucians of the early to mid-Tokugawa period. The work is written in classical Chinese (kanbun 漢文) with the addition of Japanese reading marks (kunten 訓點) and some glosses.

It appears that our set of blocks was produced at two different times. Permission to publish a 1st installment of the book was granted in late 1814 (Bunka 14/11/20). Carving of the blocks for the main text was completed in 1815, those for the prefaces in the following year, when we can assume that the work was first published. Nensai died in 1820. His remaining mss. passed to his son, Tokusai 德齋 (n.d.), who published a sequel (kōhen 後編). Permission to publish was given in 1827 (Bunsei 10), with the blocks for the main text completely carved in 1829 (Bunsei 12). Publication ought to have taken place the following year, when the prefaces were carved. As far as we can tell, the two installments were then issued together (suggested by the fact that we have blocks from both of them), but we find no reason to assume that the blocks for the first installment were recarved at that time. Thus we conjecture that our blocks date from 1815-1829. The book was later reissued in the Meiji period.

Our blocks correspond to the following leaves:

1. 1:5

2. 4:17

3. 6:3

4. 8:19

5. kōhen 3:28

6. kōhen 5:6