I THOUGHT THAT for any scientific study of Bird's journeys and her books about them it would be useful to single out their various characteristics and so I have shown that her half-century of travel was a developing process in which her trip to Japan in 1878 stands out as a watershed event. In this chapter I will elaborate on the details of that trip.

I imagine that what I have said in Chapter 2 will have surprised many readers but there is much about Bird that has been wrongly understood, or merely glossed over, and needs urgent correction; the arguments that follow are essential to this exercise. Her keen eye for detail brings a feeling of immediacy to her prose, and the frank opinions she expresses only add to its appeal. This atmosphere I left to my ‘Unbeaten Tracks in Japan – The Complete Translation’ to convey and what I will now do here is show what is required for a complete understanding of her Japan experience.

No regional or time constraints

Figures 2 and 3 (see pp. xxxii/xxxiii) show the routes of Bird's journeys to Ezo (Hokkaidō) and the Kansai and Ise, with their key points and places where she stayed or just passed through. The route for her trip to Hokkaidō, as can easily be seen from Fig. 2 for instance, took her from Tokyo via Nikkō and Aizu to Niigata on the Sea of Japan, then turned inland and threaded its way through a succession of passes and valleys to re-emerge on the Sea of Japan at Akita (Kubota) and then proceeded overland via Ōdate to Aomori.

It is also evident that from Hakodate, the gateway to Ezo, she went to Mori and having crossed by boat to Muroran went along the coast to Sarufuto and then inland to Biratori; and that on her return journey she did not go by boat from Muroran to Mori but went back to Hakodate along the coast road skirting Volcano Bay. Fig. 3 shows that having gone by boat between Yokohama and Kobe on its outward and return legs, her journey to the Kansai and Ise itself was a round trip to the Ise Shrines with Kobe as the starting point.