IN CHAPTER 3, I explained the twelve characteristics or features of Bird's journey in Japan and believe that in so doing I highlighted its fundamental points. First, that it was a venture carefully planned by Parkes. Second, that he relied on Bird to put it into practice because she was, in his view, the person most suited to the task. And third, that Bird for her part was more than equal to the trust placed in her and by completing her journey did justice to the support she received from other quarters. In this chapter, I will examine in greater detail what that support entailed. Unless I have specified otherwise, the year here is 1878.

Minister and Lady Parkes

I have mentioned on several occasions that support for her journey came predominantly from Minister Parkes and this is well borne out by observing what Bird wrote about his and his wife's activities in the days after her arrival in Japan.

The first example is on the day after Bird arrived at her hotel in Yokohama, when Parkes and his wife Fanny visited her there. Wilkinson, the Consul at Yokohama, had called on her on the previous day and their visit was probably as a result of a telegram they had received from him but it is still worth noting that the senior British diplomat in Japan and his wife took the trouble to make the jinrikisha journey to Yokohama to meet her, even though the arrangement probably was that she would be staying at the Legation a couple of days later in any case. Bird wrote of this visit in her Letter II of 22 May, which makes it seem that it took place on that day, but from Stoddard's account based on Bird's diaries we see that it was on the 21st.

Nor was it just a courtesy call. They were full of smiles and conducted a warm conversation which made Bird feel: ‘a sunshiny geniality’. They were ‘most truly kind, and encourage me so heartily in my largest projects for travelling in the interior, that I shall start as soon as I have secured a servant’. Bird's pleasure and feeling of relief is evident from her writing that they ‘brought sunshine and kindliness into the room, and left it behind them’.