Unbeaten Tracks in Japan | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1911 John Murray edition. Second proofing by Kate Ruffell.

UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVELS IN
THE INTERIOR INCLUDING VISITS TO THE ABORIGINES OF
YEZO AND THE SHRINE OF NIKKO BY ISABELLA L. BIRD

PREFACE

Having been recommended to leave home, in April 1878, in order to
recruit my health by means which had proved serviceable before, I
decided to visit Japan, attracted less by the reputed excellence of its
climate than by the certainty that it possessed, in an especial degree,
those sources of novel and sustained interest which conduce so
essentially to the enjoyment and restoration of a solitary health-seeker.
The climate disappointed me, but, though I found the country a study
rather than a rapture, its interest exceeded my largest expectations.
This is not a "Book on Japan," but a narrative of travels in Japan, and
an attempt to contribute something to the sum of knowledge of the
present condition of the country, and it was not till I had travelled for
some months in the interior of the main island and in Yezo that I
decided that my materials were novel enough to render the contribution
worth making. From Nikko northwards my route was altogether off the
beaten track, and had never been traversed in its entirety by any
European. I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in
regions unaffected by European contact. As a lady travelling alone, and
the first European lady who had been seen in several districts through
which my route lay, my experiences differed more or less widely from
those of preceding travellers; and I am able to offer a fuller account of

the aborigines of Yezo, obtained by actual acquaintance with them,
than has hitherto been given. These are my chief reasons for offering
this volume to the public.
It was with some reluctance that I decided that it should consist mainly
of letters written on the spot to my sister and a circle of personal friends,
for this form of publication involves the sacrifice of artistic
arrangement and literary treatment, and necessitates a certain amount of
egotism; but, on the other hand, it places the reader in the position of
the traveller, and makes him share the vicissitudes of travel, discomfort,
difficulty, and tedium, as well as novelty and enjoyment. The "beaten
tracks," with the exception of Nikko, have been dismissed in a few
sentences, but where their features have undergone marked changes
within a few years, as in the case of Tokiyo (Yedo), they have been
sketched more or less slightly. Many important subjects are necessarily
passed over.
In Northern Japan, in the absence of all other sources of information, I
had to learn everything from the people themselves, through an
interpreter, and every fact