Mapping Isabella Bird: Geolocation & Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)

Annotated Images

Isabella Bird includes 42 illustrations over the course of the two-volume Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (40 in-text illustrations and 2 frontispieces). In the preface to her book, she explains the source of the illustrations:

The illustrations, with the exception of three, which are by a Japanese artist, have been engraved from sketches of my own, or Japanese photographs.

-Isabella Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1880. Volume 1. Preface, x.


Considering the visual nature of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, this portion of the website is dedicated to understanding the relationship between these illustrations to the original source images on which they are based. Through the links below, you can view images that have been annotated by Christina M. Spiker and other contributors. Prof. Spiker is an art historian who is interested in the deep relationships between images and text in works meant to introduce Japanese culture to Western audiences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has written specifically about the Ainu illustrations in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan in a chapter here.

Not all source images have been discovered at this time and your help is needed. If you see a photograph that is not yet annotated, but you know a possible source connection, please participate by commenting below the illustration in question or getting in touch via e-mail. Your discovery will be credited on this website.

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