Unbeaten Tracks contains fascinating observational anecdotes of nineteenth-century Japan. This volume continues the journey, including experiences of tribal living.

Nineteenth-century English traveler, writer, and natural historian Isabella Bird contributes this stunning narrative to the genre of early travelogues about Japan. The volume Unbeaten Tracks in Japan includes a series of essays recounting Bird's months-long sojourn in the Far East. Already a treat for fans of 19th century travel literature, the book is rendered all the more unique by virtue of Bird's perspective as a Western female traveling alone in Japan.

Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was published in 1880 and recounts her travels in the Far East from 1876. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, before travelling to the Far East in order to strengthen herself to marry Dr John Bishop and live in Edinburgh. Created out of the letters Bird wrote home, primarily to her sister, Volume 1 recounts her experiences as a solo woman traveller living among the Japanese in Yokohama and Niigata. It includes descriptions of clothing, food and drink, education, housing, theatre, women's lifestyles, religion, plant life, medicine, shopping and other day-to-day activities, as well as the vicissitudes and excitement of the conditions and process of travelling, including by boat and pack-horse.