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Isabella Bird
In 1878, only ten years after the Meiji Restoration began to open Japan to the West, Isabella Bird travelled with a single young Japanese guide far from the…
In 1878, only ten years after the Meiji Restoration began to open Japan to the West, Isabella Bird travelled with a single young Japanese guide far from the treaty ports, through the mountains of northern Honshu and on to Hokkaido, to live among the Ainu people. In letters home she describes rice fields and hot springs, crowds who had never seen a foreign woman, fleas, rain and pack horses, inns and temples, and the customs and hospitality of the Ainu, with the sharp eye of a born observer.
Bird, an English traveller who overcame poor health to journey across the world, published the book in 1880, and it is still one of the best portraits of rural Japan at the start of its modern age. Availle reads all fifty-eight letters alone, in about thirteen hours.
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