Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Volume 1
An Account of Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé

Isabella Bird's fascinating observational anecdotes of nineteenth-century Japan. Volume 1 recounts first impressions and native ways of life.

Isabella Lucy Bird (Author)

9781108014625, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 June 2010

432 pages, 21 b/w illus. 1 map
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.55 kg

Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was published in 1880 and recounts her travels in the Far East from 1876. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, before travelling to the Far East in order to strengthen herself to marry Dr John Bishop and live in Edinburgh. Created out of the letters Bird wrote home, primarily to her sister, Volume 1 recounts her experiences as a solo woman traveller living among the Japanese in Yokohama and Niigata. It includes descriptions of clothing, food and drink, education, housing, theatre, women's lifestyles, religion, plant life, medicine, shopping and other day-to-day activities, as well as the vicissitudes and excitement of the conditions and process of travelling, including by boat and pack-horse.

Introductory chapter
1. First view of Japan
2. Sir Harry Parkes
3. Yedo and Tôkiyô
4. Lifeless heat
5. Narrow grooves
6. Dr. Hepburn
7. Theatrical reform
8. Kwan-non Temple
9. Fears
10. A Japanese idyll
11. The beauties of Nikkô
12. A Japanese pack-horse and pack-saddle
13. Peaceful monotony
14. Comfort disappears
15. A fantastic jumble
16. The plain of Wakamatsu
17. An infamous road
18. A hurry
Notes on missions in Niigata
19. Temple Street
20. Abominable weather
21. Mean streets
Notes on food and cookery
22. The canal-side at Niigata
23. Comely kine
24. Prosperity
25. The effect of a chicken
26. The necessity of firmness
27. A silk factory
28. A plague of immoderate rain
29. The symbolism of seaweed
30. A holiday scene
31. The fatigues of travelling
32. Good-tempered intoxication
33. Torrents of rain
34. Hope deferred
35. A lady's toilet
36. A travelling curiosity
37. A hard day's journey.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]