Japan has been fortunate in the distinction of its visiting writers. Many, including the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Edmund Blunden, Marguerite Yourcenar and Angela Carter, published memorable works inspired by their stays here. One figure who continues to enjoy affection among Japanophiles is Yorkshire-born travel writer and explorer Isabella Bird (1831-1904).
In the latter half of the 19th century, Bird was among a slowly emerging breed of women exiting the confines of the Victorian parlor, stepping through the garden gate and boarding steamers to distant lands. She was already an accomplished writer and seasoned traveler when she arrived in Tokyo in 1878, having explored the far reaches of the globe, traversing from the volcanoes of Hawaii to the Rocky Mountains of North America. Her ambitious trajectories are studied in meticulous detail by Kiyonori Kanasaka, author of “Isabella Bird and Japan: A Reassessment” and “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Revisiting Isabella Bird.”
An emeritus professor of Kyoto University and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Kanasaka is regarded as one of the world’s foremost scholars on Bird. When asked about his research approach, he says, “I pursued my Isabella Bird studies as a geographer. I believe a geographer who is interested in time and space is most fit to the science of travel and travel writing.”
His 2017 work, “Isabella Bird and Japan: A Reassessment,” is part analysis, critique and biography. Applying scrupulous research methods and a commitment to authenticity, it traces Bird’s itineraries, family circumstances and religious activities before coming to Japan. Bird may have been an open-minded and innovative travel writer, but when it came to religious convictions, she was very much a product of her time. Bird’s blind spot, in common with almost every Western visitor to Japan at the time, was an inability to recognize the ethical qualities of non-Christian faiths and people. Despite being exposed on her journeys throughout Japan to the fruits of an advanced society, she was still able to write, “The nation is sunk in immorality ... her progress is political and intellectual rather than moral.” Bird could, however, also be gracious and bestow praise where she saw fit. “I believe there is no country in the world in which a lady can travel with such absolute security from danger and rudeness as in Japan,” she wrote.
Bird was primarily a documentarist, the opposite of a sentimental traveler. Confronted by her publisher, John Murray, who implored her to tone down her realist descriptions of poverty, disease and hardship, she responded that she intended to “de-cherry-blossom” Japan. At Murray’s request, however, Bird set about writing an abridged version of her original 1880 text. It’s not clear whether reducing the two-volume work to a form that would complement the publisher’s existing series of romantic travel adventures resulted in a satisfying outcome for the author, or a mutilation. From the reader’s perspective, the resulting work, “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,” is near flawless, with the reformatting in no way detracting from the literary quality of the text.
In terms of travel scope, there are considerable differences between the original volume and the new abridged edition presented by Kanasaka in his 2020 work, “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Revisiting Isabella Bird.” Where the original included trips to the Kansai region and the grand shrines at Ise, the shorter, subsequent book focuses on a northbound journey from Tokyo, through Nikko, Niigata and the remote reaches of Tohoku, before concluding in Hokkaido.
In Kanasaka’s author preface and commentaries, which precede Bird’s travelogue, he outlines some of his additions that make the work more accessible. These include a re-pivoting of the book’s orientation, emphasizing the centrality of her journey to the less-traveled north. Where comprehensive notes, annotations, commentary, footnotes and annotations might seem burdensome in lesser hands, Kanasaka’s expansions are indispensable for text enrichment. In both “Revisiting Isabella Bird” and “A Reassessment,” Kanasaka quotes some troubling sources of misinformation on Bird, from accounts in the Japanese press of the period, to an unsparing critique of the misinterpretations, fumbling of facts, and sloppy research by some of his academic contemporaries.
An early proponent of investigative travel, in which accounts were rendered in a refined and distinctive prose style, Bird’s work, notably in her Japan account, prefigured the now common term, “literary travel writing.” With the exception of major figures in the field, such as the Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, there are few contemporary writers who can match Bird’s authorial quality, determination and sheer gumption.
These two beautifully paired and illustrated books would seem a satisfying coda, the last word on Isabella Bird studies. One suspects, however, that the author may have a good deal more to say on the subject.
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