Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Travelers' Tales Classics - Softcover

Bird, Isabella L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885211570 ISBN 13: 9781885211576

Publisher: Travelers' Tales, 2000

Synopsis

This classic travel book details Isabella Bird's 1878 trip, where she set out alone to explore the interior of Japan - a rarity not only because of Bird's sex but because the country was virtually unknown to Westerners. The Japan she describes is not the sentimental world of Madame Butterfly but a vibrant land of real people with a complex culture and hardscrabble lives.

About this title

From the Publisher

* Set in slightly larger type for easier reading.

* With a map showing Isabella fs route.

* Including a new foreword: Reading between the Lines.

From the Author

PREFACE (BY THE AUTHOR; ABRIDGED)

Having been recommended to leave home, in April 1878, in order to recruit my health by means which had proved serviceable before, I decided to visit Japan, attracted less by the reputed excellence of its climate than by the certainty that it possessed, in an especial degree, those sources of novel and sustained interest which conduce so essentially to the enjoyment and restoration of a solitary health-seeker. The climate disappointed me, but, though I ` found the country a study rather than a rapture, its interest exceeded my largest expectations.

This is not a gBook on Japan, h but a narrative of travels in Japan, and an attempt to contribute something to the sum of knowledge of the present condition of the country, and it was not till I had travelled for some months in the interior of the main island and in Yezo that I decided that my materials were novel enough to render the contribution worth making. From Nikko northwards my route ` was altogether off the beaten track, and had never been traversed in its entirety by any European. I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact. As a lady travelling alone, and the first European lady who had been seen in several districts through which my route lay, my experiences differed more or less widely from those of preceding travellers; and I am able to offer a fuller account of the aborigines of Yezo, obtained by actual acquaintance with them, than has hitherto been given. These are my chief reasons for offering this volume to the public.

....

Isabella L. Bird

Edition details

• Publisher: Travelers' Tales
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1885211570
• ISBN 13: 9781885211576
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400