Graham Greene　A Gun for Sale Hayakawa Shobo 1952　First Edition　

[PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS]

• Author: Graham Greene
• Translators: Iijima Tadashi (飯島正) & Funada Keiichi (舟田敬一)
• Title: 拳銃売ります (Kenju Urimasu / A Gun for Sale)
• Publisher: Hayakawa Shobo (早川書房), Tokyo — Kanda Kanagacho 2-2
• Year Published: 1952 (Showa 27) — First Edition, First Printing. Printed November 20; Published November 25, 1952.
• Format: Hardcover with dust jacket. Illustrated cover (oil-painting style, signed “mizo”).
• Language: Japanese
• Original Price: ¥230

[OVERVIEW]

November 1952. Hayakawa Shobo — the Tokyo publisher that would go on to define the Japanese market for crime fiction, science fiction, and literary thriller — issues the first Japanese translation of Graham Greene's A Gun for Sale (1936), one of the novels Greene himself classified as an “entertainment”: a category he used not to diminish these books but to distinguish their formal ambitions from his more explicitly Catholic fiction. A Gun for Sale, alongside The Third Man and The Confidential Agent (both also published by Hayakawa), represents Greene at his most cinematically taut — a thriller in which the moral weight of the genre is carried not by the detective but by the killer, Raven, a man with a harelip and a contract and a conscience he cannot suppress.

The dust jacket — a painterly, oil-sketch rendering of a rain-swept European square, signed “mizo” in the lower right corner — is a distinguished example of early-1950s Japanese book cover art: atmospheric, European in sensibility, and entirely suited to Greene's world of wet streets and moral ambiguity. The title in bold red characters against the muted cityscape gives the cover an urgency that the English first edition, with its more restrained design, does not match.

[IMPORTANT NOTE FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS: EASY AI TRANSLATION]

While the text is printed in Japanese, you can easily read and study this historic book using modern smartphone AI tools. By taking a photo of any page with your smartphone and using free apps like Google Lens, ChatGPT, or Google Translate, the embedded AI will instantly scan and translate the text on your screen layout. Language is no longer a barrier to owning and enjoying this rare piece of literary history.

[WHY THIS VOLUME IS A PRIZED COLLECTOR'S ITEM]

1. Hayakawa Shobo First Edition, 1952: This is the first printing of the first Japanese translation of A Gun for Sale, published by Hayakawa Shobo in the year the publisher was establishing itself as Japan's premier home for literary crime fiction. Early Hayakawa first editions from the 1950s — before the publisher's output expanded dramatically — are increasingly scarce in any condition.
2. Graham Greene's “Entertainments”: Greene's self-designated entertainments — A Gun for Sale, The Third Man, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear — are among the most collected works in twentieth-century British fiction. First editions in any language from the 1950s represent the earliest stratum of their international publication history.
3. Cover Art by “Mizo”: The dust jacket illustration — a signed oil-sketch of a rain-swept European square — is an independent work of art. The artist's signature “mizo” is visible in the lower right corner. Early Hayakawa cover art of this quality is a collecting category in its own right among Japanese book design enthusiasts.

[CONDITION]

Good Vintage Condition

• Dust Jacket: Present. Significant wear, creasing, and soiling — consistent with 74 years and clearly visible in listing photographs. The cover illustration retains its atmospheric impact.
• Boards: Solid beneath the jacket.
• Binding: Tight and fully intact.
• Interior: Age-toning consistent with 1952 paper stock. Bookseller's sticker to colophon page. No writing, no clipping.
• Please carefully inspect all high-resolution listing photos to verify condition.