Unbeaten Tracks in Japan – Isabella Bird (1911)

S$130.00

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan – Isabella Bird (1911)

S$130.00

Title: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: An Account of Travels in the Interior including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrine of Nikko

Author: Isabella L. Bird

Publisher: John Murray, London, 1911, 2nd edition.

Condition: Hardcover, fair. Spine severely sunned.  Binding sagging slightly, but tight. With lovely engravings and illustrations. 336pp excluding catalogue.

SKU: bird-japan Categories: , ,

About the book (from Wikipedia):

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (日本奥地紀行 Nihon Okuchi Kikō) is a travel diary written by Isabella Bird of her trip to Japan in 1878, at the age of 47. It was first published in English in 1881 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. It was later translated into Japanese by Tsurukichi Itō.

It chronicles the trip Bird made with a Japanese interpreter named Ito in 1878 from about June until September from Tokyo to Hokkaido (then Ezo), and recorded such things as Japanese houses, clothing, the sex industry, and the natural environment in great detail, as they were during the early years of the Meiji restoration. It also has many descriptions of the Ainu people.

The first edition was released in 1881 in two volumes and afterwards an edited version with a less detailed account of the Kansai area was released in 1885.

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop FRGS (15 October 1831 – 7 October 1904), was a nineteenth-century English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial hospital in Srinagar. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.