The nation's continuing tourism boom has been accompanied by countless new guidebooks and websites on all things Japanese. Today, those who want to learn about Japan are spoiled for choice. But that was not always the case.

Well over a century ago, reliable English-language information on Japan came in the form of a few guidebooks, as well as personal letters and journals from perhaps a dozen or so British and American visitors and residents. A sample of some of these 19th and early 20th century English-language accounts offers clues as to how successive foreign visitors, and the guidebooks that catered to them, came to see Japan.

It is difficult for today's travelers to fully appreciate the barriers faced by the very small numbers of Western residents and tourists in the years that followed the 1868 Meiji Restoration.