"the further I go / more letters from home / never arrive / and I am alone / all of the way"

[larryhammer]

Recent interesting read: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by that indefatigable Victorian traveler Isabella Bird. This records, in letters to her sister, a 1878 journey through Tohoku and Hokkaido. Largely because I've never seen much by way of the conditions in the countryside mid-Meiji period.

Bird is not a completely reliable or unbiased observer (and I wonder just how much she's failing to see that I don't know enough to recognize), and when she reaches Hokkaido, among the Ainu, she becomes an Amateur Victorian Anthropologist, Wince-Worthy Variety. However, comma, she's a curious and generally sympathetic observer, is far less orientalizing than many Western writers of the period (AVAWWV aside), and has a lively and entertaining style.

Also, it's amusing to see her casually press "Dr. Hepburn" into use as an interpreter in Yokohama.

---L.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I didn't name the protagonist of my next series "Isabella" after her, but once I found out about her books, I decided it was fate.

Haven't read her Japanese book yet, but the interesting thing about reading her Rocky Mountains letters is the way that she's entirely willing to editorialize. I'm so accustomed to anthropological writing, which even back then generally tried to dress itself in a veneer of objectivity, that it's weirdly refreshing to see her say things like "these people are total assholes* and can't be bothered to bathe; however, their neighbors are lovely people." She isn't unbiased, but the flip side is that she isn't trying to hide her bias. And she's much more open to new experiences, even unpleasant ones, than I tend to expect of Victorian writers.



*In case you couldn't tell, this an extremely loose paraphrase of her actual words.

[larryhammer]

Yes, to all that -- both her openness and her open judgement. This works in her favor as a tourist but ... not so much when she's anthropologizing.

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Have you read much anthropology from that era? Her contemporaries were trying to sort the world into the ages of Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization. (And doing it from their armchairs back in England to boot.) She's problematic compared to modern stuff, but I honestly think I might take her flaws over those of the supposedly academic writing of the time.

[larryhammer]

I've read some, enough to know how much of an advance (wrong as it was) Frazier and his generation were. Bird takes over the contemporary schema pretty close to wholesale, unfortunately, with ethnic Japanese binned as Civilized and Ainu as Savages. (One wonders what she would have made of Okinawans, what with their political and so ethnic status being in the process of redefinition at the time.)

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ah, pity. I meant to add that having not read the Japan book, I don't know what attitude she takes in that one, ergo it might be not so hot. Aside from one sentence describing some very unhappy-looking Indians at a train station, the Rocky Mountains book doesn't really get into the anthropology of non-white peoples -- she's mostly talking about the settlers she encounters.

[larryhammer]

The journey through northern Japan, where she applies different (i.e., Civilized) standards, is much, much better than the Hokkaido part. As such, it's on par with the settlers, more or less. (It's been a while since I read the Rocky Mountain book, though, so the parity may have a certain rosy fuzziness due to degraded memories.)

Edited to fix misplaced modifier.

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'll keep that in mind when I read it; such things are often less bothersome if you're prepared for them.

[larryhammer]

Forewarned is, indeed, forearmored.

---L.