Travelogues about Japan in the 19th century

Ahead of my trip to Japan, I decided to do a more thorough review of what 19th century travelogues about Japan exist in the English language. Maybe I’ll do Japanese as well, but starting in English. The thing I find so fascinating about reading these is that I compare my knowledge of Japanese culture today to what it would have been like centuries ago. You notice the little changes and what has held steady over the years in Japanese culture.

Here’s the timelines of the Japanese travelogues I’ve read:

• 1862, A Lady’s Visit to Manilla and Japan by Anna d’Almeida
• 1865-1867, The Antipodes and Round the World by Alice M. Frere
• 1878, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird. This is the later edition, and this and this is the rarer one that has 2 volumes.
• 1893, Japan As We Saw It by Mary Jane Bickersteth

Isabella Bird

I had already read her pivotal work on her travels to Japan, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, and appreciated the glimpse of a country that was, very similarly to other travel writing I’ve read, comprised of both a highly educated / distinguished class and also deep poverty. The difference with this is just how much the missionary / proselytising instinct is in the writers. It felt stronger than what I’ve seen with their trips around the Middle East. And of course we have to read these pieces through a lens that takes into account these embedded prejudices.

I found this analysis of her book, and although I didn’t get a chance to read it, it did point out that interestingly the earlier editions of this work featured more thorough depictions of her travels including in Kansai. This wasn’t in the common later edition that I read.

I decided to read the full version for this trip, and got about the same impression of her work as the first time. The one thing to note is that although originally I’d finished reading it with a feeling that Bird was quite religious and fixated on the impact missionaries were having in Japan, but comparing this to actual missionaries whom I read about (see my description of Bickersteth’s travelogue), she comes across as much less bigoted and much more willing to understand these so-called ‘heathen’ individuals on a deep level. She does this whilst at the same time making it clear who she thinks is right in the Big Question of religion.

This is the later edition, and this and this is the rarer one that has 2 volumes.

An interesting, succinct explanation of Japanese interior design — one to emulate even today:

None of these treasures are kept in the house, but in the kura or fireproof storehouse close by. The rooms are not encumbered by ornaments; a single kakemono, or fine piece of lacquer or china appears for a few days and then makes way for something else; so they have variety as well as simplicity, and each object is enjoyed in its turn without distraction. Page 139

She also went to Hawaii (a few years before this), and I’ll be reading her work again for my subsequent trip to Honolulu and Kauai this month.

Anna d’Almeida

This was a fairly light read with lots of depictions of her travels to and fro. She went to Manila, Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai and finally to Nagasaki and Yokohama. I found myself constantly going back to a map to see if I could work out her route. The ship travel and depictions of swarms of cockroaches in her cabin renders the mode of transport decidedly unromantic. She also travels with her baby girl, whom she mentions a few times, and I was trying to figure out the logistics of traveling with a child, but the only thing I could work out was that they were accompanied by a nurse at each point.

I was acutely aware of the things she was describing in Japan which I knew she was getting wrong or somewhat oversimplifying. An example is her descriptions of irezumi, tattoos on the workers in Japan, which she takes great pains to describe but doesn’t really have the context to tell us why they have such elaborate tattoos, or to even know that the people who do are often associated with crime.

It really reminds me that these travelogues are certainly not to be taken at face value. They are remnants of one person’s impressions of a foreign culture many years ago. And it’s like looking through a prism and seeing many different angles at once – what the writer writes, sometimes what they censor, what their own society believes about the place, what the culture actually was like back then, and also what I know about it in the modern day. Comparing all these viewpoints is what makes old travelogues so fascinating.

Alice Frere

Later Mrs Godfrey Clerk, this work is a memoir of her 1865-1867 journey through Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, China, Japan and finally San Francisco. Seeing how long this one was, I intended to only read the Japan portion, but her introduction was sufficient to get me to keep going and I ended up reading it all and quite enjoying it.

Part of the charm is in what she writes about: not so much boring history of dwelling on geological details (like some others do), but more an actual step-by-step walkthrough of her journey. It really is fascinating seeing how much effort it took for them to travel to all the places they did in a span of two years.

Her personality also shines through and I found myself curious about who she was and her background. From what I could find, Alice was only 24 when she went on this journey with her father, who had served in governmental posts in India for many years. Only a short while after her trip she marries a man who was raised in India (she is clearly familiar with the territory and drops lots of references about it — some family did stay home in Britain when their fathers were posted in the colonies, so it’s not clear if she grew up there). She also seems to have travelled a lot outside this trip — she mentions Egypt a few times, for example. I did find out a lot about her son George, who became a diplomat. And I found one photo of her:

As for her actual travels in Japan, she visits Nagasaki (as seems to have been the done thing back then, by taking a steamer from Shanghai) and from there goes to Yokohama.

The area actually seems a lot more dangerous than it was described as being from the earlier travelogue I read. It does seem that there were rising tensions after events like this one in 1862 (did you know Britain actually went to war with Japan briefly? I didn’t). Japan had only just opened up in the last decade and there were many who were understandably resisting this. There are a few incidents where rocks are thrown at them or they are yelled at, and there are places they are not allowed to visit as foreigners. On the whole, though, she feels most Japanese are extremely kind and polite, and she says that out of no other country would she most want to revisit this one. I understand the sentiment!

I’ll leave you with this insightful passage from her time in Japan:

I am afraid there are few of them who do not possess the usual attributes of Eastern nations; viz ., a tendency to lie and steal whenever they get a chance ; but those who have had most to do with them agree in speaking highly and hopefully of them as a people. I fear , too, that our own countrymen, in many instances, do great harm by insisting , John Bull-like, that there cannot be such a fine fellow in the world as an Englishman, and treating the Japanese, who probably think much the same of themselves, as inferiors, and as a conquered people. When men consider themselves justified in pushing a native off the causeway, upon which both happen to be, as a young man one morning, at the table d’hôte, maintained he had a right to do, ‘because the native was an inferior , and must always be looked upon as an inferior,’ it is not surprising that it is necessary to go about with pistols and revolvers. Page 396

Mary Jane Bickersteth

This book immediately gives itself away as being a bit more stuffy than the above work as she makes it clear it is written from a missionary’s perspective: she says she wouldn’t be traveling to these parts if she hadn’t previously been reassured that Christianity would make good headway there. I wasn’t too interested in that but read it, as I usually do with these works, more out of curiosity to experience traveling with someone so long ago. And also a chance to see her perspectives.

The first thing I noticed on reading this was how much has changed in Japan over the 25 years since we last read about the region. They take a train to get from Yokohama to Tokyo (which is no longer called Edo), for example, and there is no longer feudal system. Things have changed! In general, everything is a lot more modern, with more connections with foreigners and various references to the ‘old ways’ such as how married women painted their teeth black or when samurai still existed (many have now become policemen). These were all just how things were done in the travelogues I read from the 1860s.

The main event that makes this a worthwhile book to read is that the Bickersteths were unfortunately in Japan during the Great Earthquake of 1891. They barely escaped being at the epicentre of it, having traveled through Nagoya / Gifu just a few days before. Their descriptions of the earthquake and the destruction it caused are vivid and harrowing.

For the most part, however, I found this one a slog to work through. The author is clearly writing with the goal of showing how lovely yet heathenish the Japanese are (a word she uses many times), and how important it is for missionaries to have more resources to generate more converts. This is not a surprise, given that her father who also came on the journey was the Bishop of Exeter, and her brother the Bishop of Japan. Alongside the kind works they are doing to help the poor, there is the constant (sometimes even overtly expressed) belief that they must do these things and must love these people because it is the Christian thing to do and the best way to create a Christian nation. It’s very tiring to read. By the way, she had fifteen siblings all from the same mother!!

I couldn’t help but compare it to the Christian novels I’ve read that are from a directly Japanese point of view. Shusaku Endo was an author from the mid-20th century who grew up Catholic. His works are distinctly Japanese and Catholic. They are also very harrowing. For a different perspective on being a Japanese Christian, I do recommend checking out his works. Silence is quite representative of Endo’s works. My favourite was probably this one, Foreign Studies, which has a pretty harrowing message underlying it about how Japanese people do when they go abroad.

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