The most interesting thing about Ryuhoku Narushima (1837-1884), author of the "New Chronicles of Yanagibashi" and "Diary of a Journey to the West" is how much this scholar, journalist, traveler and writer got up to.
The two books collected in this volume hint at his breadth. The first, "New Chronicles of Yanagibashi," deals with life in the "flower and willow world" of Meiji, Tokyo.
The second is a record of a trip Narushima made to Europe and North America in the early 1870s, and is illuminating on what it was like to be one of the few Japanese abroad then who was not part of a government-sponsored mission.