One Final Chapter
The Little House
Virginia Lee Burton published her picture book The Little House in 1942, just one year after the start of the Pacific War. Momoko Ishii’s translation into Japanese was published only twelve years later, in 1954. The copy that Shoji Itakura had kept in his study was the English original, and not only was it clearly well-read but the binding had been restored, probably by the artist himself. It remains unclear where or how he got his hands on a copy.
However, according to the curator’s explanation, Itakura’s own mysterious work titled ‘The Little House’ was thought to date from the early 1950s, judging from the unique touches in his style. This work was clearly modelled on the composition of Burton’s The Little House, so he must have come across the orig
