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Travel Guides, Travelers and Guides:
Meiji Period Globetrotters and the Visualization of Japan
Gregory L. ROHE
(Aichi Gakuin University)
Abstract
With the opening of Japan during the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods, travelers poured into the country,
eager to experience for themselves a culture that had previously been, until only recently, entirely closed tothem. The end of Japanese exclusion also corresponded with the beginning of large-scale international
tourism. The “globetrotting” international traveler became a feature of Meiji Japan, and while thesetravelers were being introduced to Japan by native Japanese guides, some of them produced first-person
narratives of their experiences here which subsequently served as guides for readers back home. Thesenarratives were illustrated with images that helped to create a visual culture that dominated Western
impressions of Japan. The following is a partial transcript of the keynote address given at the Japan
Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies’ 15th annual conference held on September 13th 2014,
which looked at English-language guidebooks for foreign travelers to Japan during the Meiji Period. The
visual record illustrating other travel narratives – from circumnavigators like cyclist Thomas Stevens andrival journalists Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, to photojournalist Herbert G. Ponting, and children’s
fiction author Edward Greey – was also considered.
Introduction
Today, I’d like us to consider a particular set of visual images: those that can be found in the travel
narratives of foreign travelers who came to Japan during the Meiji Period. The reason I’m interested inthese travelogues is because, in an age before the lavishly illustrated travel guides that we know today, theyfunctioned as guides to readers around the world, helping readers visualize Japan, and helping them form a
distinctive image of Japan, one that was, for the most part, picturesque and peaceful, safe and tranquil,
traditional and unchanging, and finally, gracefully feminine. While this image wasn’t a false one, it
wasn't entirely full either, overlooking as it did other aspects that also characterized Meiji Japan, namely its
breathtakingly speedy modernization, industrialization and militarization.

ROHE Gregory L. , “Travel guides, travelers and guides: Meiji period globetrotters and the visualization ofJapan,” Interpreting and Translation Studies, No.15, 2015. Pages 75-90. ©by the Japan Association forInterpreting and Translation Studies75

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As with any journey we will meet some fascinating travelers along the way: a small, sickly woman withhidden reserves of strength; another woman in love with cherry blossoms; two ladies racing each otheraround the world, and another circumnavigator making his journey in a particularly unusual sort of way;
finally, we’ll meet a photographer about to embark on one of the most spectacular failures of the early 20th
century. Through their visual record, perhaps it is possible to see Japan as they saw it, or rather as theywanted us to see it.
Guidebooks
Thomas Cook's first guided tour in 1841 began what I think we can callthe age of large-scale commercial travel. By the 1880s, it was in fullswing, and a traveler interested in foreign travel could choose from anumber of different travel guides, some focusing on particular
destinations, and others providing more general advice.

ThomasKnox’s How to Travel definitely fell into the second category, offering“hints, advice and suggestions to travelers by land and sea all over the
globe.” Although Knox meant to give general advice, his book turned
out to be both wide-ranging and remarkably specific. It had chapterson “Traveling with Camels and Elephants,” “Traveling with Reindeer
and Dogs,” and, particularly pertinent to Japan, “Traveling with
Man-power – Palankeens, Jinirikishas, and Sedan Chairs.” He evenhad a helpful chapter titled “Traveling Without Money – Round the World for $50.” (Knox, 1881). Thiscan only be matched by Robert Luce’s tips, in his 1897 book Going Abroad? Some Advice, on how to rent
an apartment in Paris for $180 a year.
For much of the Meiji Period, the sine qua non of travel in Japan,
for English speakers at least, was Murray’s Handbook. The John
Murray publishing house dominated English-language travel
literature throughout the 19th century and into the 20th.
Beginning in 1891, the handbooks were co-authored by the noted
Japan specialist, Basil Hall Chamberlain. As we can see fromthe pages introducing Atsuta Shrine and Nagoya, the handbooks
were text-heavy, somewhat daunting perhaps to a 21st century
globetrotter accustomed to travel guides with luscious, glossy
illustrations – illustrations so enticing that they might leave theunsuspecting traveler somewhat underwhelmed when standing infront of the real thing.

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Undoubtedly more visually interesting than the Handbook’s main text were the advertisements in back.
Here we can find advertisements for goods and services that were meant to appeal to foreign tourists inJapan. Hotels, for example: The Grand Hotel in Yokohama, of course, destroyed in the Great Kanto
Earthquake in 1923, and then reborn as the Hotel New Grand in
1927 and still going strong today; Hakone’s Fujiya Hotel and the
Nikko Hotel; and of course The Kanaya Hotel in Nikko.
(Chamberlain, 1894)
There are hints for possible souvenirs, like photographs orphotographic albums.

The well-known photographer Ogawa

Kazumasa gets an impressive two-page spread, perhaps because it
was his company that printed the Handbook.

Meidi-ya, agrocery store that was one of the few places where Japanese could
buy imported foodstuffs, or where a homesick foreigner might beable to pick up some comfort from home.
Here it’s advertising a variety of goods, including libations from the Japan Brewery Company, also known
as The Kirin Beer. The print is a bit small; in its prominent advertisement on the inside of the back cover,
however, Kirin uses a somewhat larger print for its name as it introduces “the Purest Beer Sold in Japan,”which is “recommended by the whole medical faculty as a light and wholesome beverage.” For anyone
skeptical about that statement, “Medical Testimonials and Chemical Analysis (can be) forwarded on
application.” Kirin no longer solicits customers to inquire about that information in their advertisements
today. The success of beer in Japan today might not have been predicted after its initial reception, when it
was called “bitter horse-piss wine.”
Another advertisement for an organization called the Kihin-Kwai
or Society for Facilitating Foreign Travel in Japan states that
number one on their list of principal functions is: “to exercise
superintendence over guides.”This seems to suggest that ademand had been expressed, perhaps by travelers themselves, forthe supervision of guides and that the Kihin-Kwai was satisfyingthat demand.
Another advertisement is for the Kaiyusha Licensed Guides
Association, which assures travelers that their guides are“competent, trustworthy… and responsible.” At the top of thelist of licensed guides in Yokohama is a T. Ito. Research by Prof.
Kanasaka Kiyonori at Kyoto University suggests that this is Ito773ࠗ㏻ヂ⩻ヂ◊✲࠘15 ྕ㸦2015㸧

Tsurukichi, a well-respected translator, interpreter and guide in his day. Early in Ito’s career he played aprominent role in this book, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: An Account of Travels in the Interior Including
Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkǀ and Isé by Isabella Bird.
Isabella Bird
Two words that often come up when reading about Isabella Bird are intrepid and indomitable. These are
not two words, however, that one might associate with her when simply looking at her. She was rather
short and plump; actually, she was rather unassuming. She was born in Scotland in 1831, and throughout
her life she was bothered by health problems. When she was 19 she had spinal surgery, which, in the age
before anesthetic, must have been fairly ghastly. At one point she complained of suffering fromneuralgia, pain in my bones, prickly pins and needles in my limbs, excruciating nervousness,exhaustion, sore throat, swelling of the glands behind each ear and stupidity.
The usual remedy for these ailments is not to travel around the world. But that's exactly what she did.
When her doctor recommended that she go abroad, perhaps expecting that she would go relax at a spa on
the continent, Isabella Bird set out, and became one of the most intrepid and indomitable travelers of the
19th century.
The moment she set foot on the first steamer that would carry her abroad, she set her life in a pendulum
swing that would alternate between frailty and fortitude. At home, where she was bound by the gender
restrictions and expectations that encumbered most Victorian women, she was frail, sickly and the list of
her ailments seemed to go on and on; but when she was on a boat heading for parts unknown, she usually
started to perk up. An obituary put it more succinctly, calling her "an invalid at home; a Samson abroad."
She turned her travels into books. She published over fifteen of them. They became some of the best
selling travel literature in history, making her a celebrity at home.

Her lectures drew audiences

numbering in the thousands, a fact that the Royal Geographical Society couldn't overlook when
considering to take her on as member. The move was remarkably controversial, though. Naysayers
couldn't countenance the possibility of allowing a woman -- a woman! -- into the hallowed halls of thesociety. She was finally made a member in 1892, the first woman ever to be accepted as a member.
The naysayers had their way after she died, however, and another woman would not be accepted into theRoyal Geographical Society until 20 years later, in a new century.
She climbed Mauna Loa, the tallest volcano in the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii, making her only thesecond woman to do so in history; she trekked over 8000 miles through China, and was almost killed by an

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angry mob in Peking; she fell in love with a one-eyed desperado in Colorado. She also travelled from
Yokohama to Hokkaido the hard way: on “unbeaten tracks.”
Foreign tourism to Japan was at the time a very recent development.
The treaty port at Yokohama had opened to foreign trade less thantwenty years earlier, in 1859. Initially, foreigners in the treaty ports
were almost exclusively diplomats, merchants and sailors. Rapidly,
however, their ranks swelled to include a new breed of traveler: the"globetrotter": international travelers with time to spare and money tospend.

These travelers were excited to experience the newly

opened Japan. At first the movement of foreigners was restricted tothe treaty ports and their immediate surroundings.

In 1874,

however, the new Meiji government opened the entire country to any
foreign traveler with a passport. Most foreign travelers, however, didn't stray beyond well-traveled routes,
or "beaten tracks", as Bird put it. Destinations along these paths included Tokyo and Nikko close to
Yokohama and further afield, along the Tokaido, Kyoto, Nara and Osaka.
Bird’s plan was somewhat more ambitious. Her plan was to travel the “unbeaten tracks” of Japan, from
Yokohama, through the northern parts of Honshu and then to Hokkaido, making her the first non-Japanese
woman ever to do so.
Bird arrived in Japan on May 21st, 1878. Her first encounter with Mt. Fuji left a deep impression:
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard ecstasies all over thedeck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards instead of earthwards, I saw far above any
possibility of height, as one would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow… fromwhich it sweeps upwards in a glorious curve, very wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its
base and the intervening country veiled in a pale grey mist. It was a wonderful vision, andshortly, as a vision, vanished (Bird, 1880).
This is one of the first illustrations in her book, showing readers a strangely conical Mt. Fuji. Bird
correctly refers to it as “Fuji-san,” although in the coming years the term “Fuji-yama” would also becomecommon among foreigners. Mt. Fuji, of course, became one of those images indelibly associated withJapan itself, and one that would contribute to its image of picturesque tranquility. In Bird’s account it
seems almost magical, appearing and then disappearing again.
With the help of James Curtis Hepburn, long-time resident of Japan and father of the Hepburn system ofromanizing Japanese, Bird interviewed candidates to be her interpreter and guide. Many were rejected795ࠗ㏻ヂ⩻ヂ◊✲࠘15 ྕ㸦2015㸧

due to their poor English. Of the three remaining possibilities, one was rejected because he was too muchof a dandy, another seemed to reject Bird when he understood where she wanted to go, and a third might
have been chosen had a young man not arrived suddenly without an appointment or references.
Bird’s first meeting with Ito was inauspicious:
He is only eighteen, but this is the equivalent of twenty-three or twenty-four with us, and only 4feet 10 inches in height, but, though bandy-legged, is well proportioned and strong-looking.
He has a round and singularly plain face, good teeth, much elongated eyes, and the heavy droopof the eyelids almost caricatures the usual Japanese peculiarity. He is the most stupid-looking
Japanese that I have ever seen, but from a rapid furtive glance in his eyes now and then, I thinkthat the stolidity is partly assumed (Bird, 1880).
The comments are harsh, particularly to an audience today, and while one can’t defend Bird for writing
them, perhaps it is possible to consider that she understood the precariousness of the situation that she
would be in. She would be Ito’s employer, but for much of their journey she would also be entirely at his
mercy. In the earliest part of the book, she is often concerned that he will “squeeze” her, or overcharge
her for goods and services procured on the road, and then pocket the difference. Her concern comes tothe very heart of the relationship between the employer and the guide -- or the translator or the interpreter,
for that matter: the issue of trust. Because an employer is often in a position of complete ignorance, hewill often wonder – until proven otherwise – whether he is being taken advantage of.
Luckily for Bird, Ito proved to be not only dependable, but invaluable.
He always managed to find food as well as lodging for them both.
(Although at times neither were ideal:
problem.

Fleas were a constant

In one rural farmhouse where she was lodging, Bird

describes snakes that were so fat from eating the plentiful rats thatwhen they slithered up into the ceiling rafters and fell asleep, theywould occasionally come tumbling down onto her bed.)

They

traveled through areas where Japanese had never seen a foreigner,and so dispersing crowds – which were, to Bird’s surprise and relief,
never aggressive – became one of Ito’s important tasks. Some locals, however, proved more difficult todisperse. One elderly gentleman demanded to know whether Bird was a man or a woman because nothing
about her appearance could indicate to him which she might be. Another group of children assumed that
Ito was the owner of a traveling circus and that Bird was his performing ape.
Throughout the journey, Ito proved himself to be quick-witted, resourceful and energetic. In many ways
he was the prototypical “Meiji Man.” Bird gives us little information about his background, however,80

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referring to him only by a single name. Here, I think, is another of the inherent problems with the work of
the interpreter-guide or translator: While their role is crucial, they are often
expected to do it in the shadows, unseen. At times, it can seem like athankless job. If we are to assume that this is indeed a picture of Ito, it
was obviously taken many years after his association with Isabella Bird.
What did he look like when he traveled with Isabella Bird? We willprobably never know.

Although she provides pictures of the British

consul’s messenger, and one of her rickshaw drivers, she gives us no
picture of Ito, one of the most important players in her story.
Eliza Scidmore
I’ll linger here on the kurumaya because the kuruma or
jinrikisha, or as it came to be known among foreigners, therickshaw, became one of those images indelibly associated withJapan throughout the world.

Travelers to Japan would

invariably ride in them, and they could buy souvenir photos toshow friends back home. They could even buy “gag” photos
poking fun at the typically Japanese experience.
By the late 19th century, the rickshaw had become so
associated with Japan that it functioned as something of ametonym, leaving potential readers of Eliza Scidmore’s
Jinrikisha Days no doubt what sort of travelogue they might begetting themselves into after a simple glance at the title. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore was born in the state of
Iowa in the United States in 1856, and grew up in the state of Wisconsin. Both had been states for only
about ten years at the time, and were still really on the frontier of the nation. This, along with the fact thather parents had been missionaries, might have instilled in Scidmore an interest in travel to remote regions.
In 1883, at the age of 26, she went to Alaska by mail steamer and the resulting account of her time there,
Alaska, it’s Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago, published in 1885, was the first travelogue to deal
with the area and remained a popular guidebook well into the 20th century.
Two years later, in 1885, Scidmore made her first trip to Japan, following her brother, a career diplomat
who had been posted here. Jinrikishaw Days is the narrative of her travels throughout Japan, along paths
somewhat more beaten than the ones Bird traveled.
Although the book is heavily illustrated, featuring over 30 images, for the most part they fall into a fairly
narrow set of themes, all of which present Japan as tranquil, peaceful, non-threatening and to a large extent,

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feminine. Landscapes, gardens and floral themes predominate. When people are present in the pictures,
they are most often women, and those women are most often young. Of the 18 pictures that featurepeople, 11 feature women, 8 of those exclusively. (We can contrast this with the 8 pictures featuring men,and the 5 that feature men exclusively.) I would suggest that none of the images of women are portraitsof particular women, however, but rather they are props, representing female "types": occupations or social
positions. (Scidmore, 1891)
If we take a look at the pictures that only feature men, we can find two of them are portraits of gentlementhat Scidmore met and writes about at length in her text. (This is the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro IX,
here referred to as “Danjiro”) Others are pictures of either craftspeople or laborers.
The images are interesting as much for what's absent as what's present. We have no portraits, for example,of the political leaders behind the Meiji period catchphrase "Bunmei Kaika" and the extraordinary social,
cultural and economic transformation that the phrase implied. No pictures of the industrial leaders who
fueled the engines behind that transformation; no images of the generals or officers who transformed
Japan's army and navy -- in less than a generation -- into the superpower of the region, and not a single
picture of even one of the thousands of soldiers who had, less than a decade before the book’s publication,
marched into China, or the Korean Peninsula, or into the island that we know today as Taiwan, helping to
expand the Empire of Japan.
Another surprising omission in Jinrikisha Days isthat in all the landscapes and pictures of gardens
and flowers, there isn't a single picture of a Japanesecherry tree and the blossoms that Scidmore came tolove. If she is remembered at all today it is as thewoman who brought the sakura to Washington DC.
After years of lobbying, her efforts finally paid off
and a planting ceremony was held on March 27th,
1912.

Today over 3700 cherry trees line the

Potomac River's Tidal Basin, and attract 1.5 million
people to the nation's capital for its annual National Cherry Blossom Festival.
Both Isabella Bird and Eliza Scidmore spent a significant amount of time in Japan during their lives. Two
women who came to Japan in 1889 and 1890 stayed only briefly, but were at the center of one of the mosttalked-about media events of their day. Nelly Bly and Elizabeth Bisland worked for rival New Yorkpublications, and were racing each other to circumnavigate the globe, Bly heading east and Bisland
heading west. Their story is fascinating but within the parameters of this falk they will be mentioned onlyin passing because neither of the accounts that the women produced were illustrated. Bly never returned

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to Japan, but Bisland did a number of times after having fallen in love with the country and its people.
She wrote very lovingly about Japan.

Today we remember Bisland perhaps less for her swift

circumnavigation than for the fact that she became the editor of her good friend, Lafcadio Hearn’s, papers
after he died.
Thomas Stevens
Perhaps the winner of the sweepstakes in going around the world in the most unusual manner was Thomas
Stevens, who did it on a “penny-farthing.” It was two British coins common during the 19th century that,
because of their relative dimensions, lent their names to the “penny-farthing” or “high-wheeler” bicycle.
Stevens’ circumnavigation (or as he called it, “circumcycling”) of the globe was sponsored by Outing
magazine which had been founded to popularize exercise, sporting and bicycling and the healthy lifestyles
that they were believed to promote.
Of course Stevens couldn’t simply ride non-stop around the world. At times he had to use his
penny-farthing to help him pole-vault over small bodies of water. Larger bodies of water, like oceans,required crossing by boat. But for the most part it was Stevens on his bike.
The resulting account of his travels, Around theWorld on a Bicycle, came out in two volumes:
volume one from San Francisco to Teheran andvolume two from Teheran to Yokohama.
On the cover of Volume Two we have a figure,perhaps an idealized image of the author himself,with wings at head and foot signifying him as
Mercury, the Greek god of travel and boundary
crossing. (Stevens, 1888).
Stevens rode eastward from San Francisco, so he came to Japan at the very end his journey. It was afortunate way to finish because he adored Japan. “Happy people! Happy Country!” he exclaims at one
point. He helps his reader visualize Japan by providing illustrations that show it as, again, peaceful,picturesque and feminine.

Here we have Stevens riding a ferry in Shimonoseki with a young

kimono-clad woman, her Japanese parasol echoing the round wheel of his penny-farthing. Anotherimage shows him leaving his inn, and another racing the ubiquitous rickshaw, with a young Japanese
woman looking on.

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The apotheosis of the penny-farthing on
the cover of Stevens’ book is ironic in thatby the time the book was published in 1888,
the penny-farthing was already becoming
something of an anachronism -- the reason
being that they were incredibly dangerous
to ride. The power is applied directly tothe pedals of the large front wheel,
demanding that the rider’s center of gravity
is almost directly above the front axle.
This means that any bump or obstacle in
the road (if there is a road) that stops the bicycle will send the rider flying over the handlebars. A fall off apenny-farthing usually meant that a rider would land on his or her face, and that could be (and often was)fatal. In the mid-1880s the “safety” bicycle began to be popular. It had the important innovation of abicycle chain, which allowed the rider to sit back at a safer distance from the front wheel, the handlebars
and a face-landing. The safety bicycle soon replaced its predecessor in popularity and the penny-farthing
quickly faded into history, a symbol of a bygone age.
Edward Greey
Around the world, children in the late 19th
century could learn about Japan at an earlyage, and the images used to help themvisualize Japan were many of the sameimages we have looked at today. In her
1898 children’s book All the World Over,
Edith Farmiloe introduces Japan withfamiliar

images:young

kimono-clad

women, holding parasols and riding in arickshaw, with a Mt. Fuji-like silhouette in
the background (Farmiloe, 1898).
Edward Greey was the author of a number of books for young people featuring Japan. He was an
Englishman who came to Japan with the first official British delegation under Lord Elgin in 1855, and afterthat served on the diplomatic staff of the British consul. So he was very familiar with Japan and Japaneseculture. It's curious, however, that in the introduction of his book Young Americans in Japan, he suggeststhat he is an American and was with Commodore Perry's mission when the United States first madecontact with Japan in 1853. Perhaps this isn't entirely surprising considering that at the time of the book's

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publication that Greey had relocated to New York and had established himself as a Japanese art dealer.
Perhaps he felt that introducing readers to Japan through his books would allow him to introduce newcustomers to his business. To further bolster his credentials as a "Japan hand", Greey signs his name inkanji characters.
Greey's Young Americans in Japan is different from the otherworks considered here because it’s a work of fiction. It's afictionalized travelogue following the Jewett family from theUnited States to Japan, where they travel from Nagasaki to Tokyoand where the father of the clan eventually takes up a teachingposition. They’re guided on their journey through western Japanby this fellow, their Japanese friend Oto Nambo, who has until
recently been studying medicine in the United States.

Thisnarrative convention allows Greey first to introduce aspects ofJapan and its culture through the eager and curious eyes of thefamily, and then allows him to provide an explanation through theNambo character.

In the process, Nambo becomes a rather

intriguing character. He is a westernized Japanese who is nonetheless enthusiastic for his American
friends to understand Japan and learn to love it (Greey, 1882).
The book is extensively
illustrated and I think thisservedtwo

purposesforimportant
Greey.

First, a heavily illustrated
book was expected to sellbetter than one that wasnot.

The illustrations

served another important
purpose, however, andthat was to help Greey
construct his narrative. He went about writing the story in a rather unusual way: Instead of writing thestory and then finding appropriate illustrations that could accompany the text, Greey first would findimages from a variety of different sources and then write the story around those images.
The source Greey most often lifted from was Aime Humbert’s Le Japon illustre, published originally in
French in 1870, and later translated into English as Japan and the Japanese Illustrated in 1874. For
example, we have this illustration from Young Americans in Japan, of “A Famous Singer.” Here is85

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Humbert’s original. It shows a woman playing a shamisen. In Greey’s story it accompanies a passage
in which the family goes to see this famous entertainer. The children find the performance amusing, themother finds it distressing, but the father is intrigued by it, commenting that the music reminds him ofRichard Wagner (Greey, 1882).
Another illustration Greey appropriated directly from Humbert was “Streets of Tokio, New Year’s
Afternoon.” As he did with the picture of the shamisen player, Greey has not only reprinted theillustration, but he has completely recontexualized it. In Humbert, it simply illustrates a holiday street
scene. In Greey’s story, however, it describes the boisterous scene outside the family’s new home.
Another source Humbert borrowed from was the Bakumatsu Period photographer, Felice Beato. For
example, Beato’s “Betto”, or groom became in the Greey’s story the family’s grooms, taking care of thehorses. Initially, the children of the family are concerned, mistaking their tattoos for some sort of terrible
skin disease.
Herbert Ponting
We will conclude by moving from Felice Beato, one of Japan’s first professional photographers, to Herbert
Ponting, who was already quite famous as a photographer when he came to Japan at the end of the Meiji
Period. By his own account, he stayed in Japan for three years during which time he had taken enoughphotographs to fill two small volumes: Fujisan and Japanese Studies; and one much longer volume, In
Lotus-Land Japan, a book which would become one of his most successful. On the cover we can see twoof his favorite Japanese subjects: Mt. Fuji, and a young Japanese women. Of the 107 photographs
reproduced in In Lotus-Land Japan, eight are full-color, and-in plates.

Over half feature young

kimono-clad Japanese women, and 17 are focused specifically on Mt. Fuji (Ponting, 1910).
Although Ponting doesn't seem to have kept a notebook, his bookoften describes the lengths he went to in order to achieve thedesired effect in particular pictures. In this photo, “Fuji and theKaia Grass,” there were two elements that Ponting felt werecritical to getting the composition just right: Mt. Fuji had to beunobscured by clouds and the grass in front had to be perfectly
still so as not to appear blurred. A consummate perfectionist,
Ponting writes that it took him over a dozen trips back and forthfrom the nearest village before he could take this picture of acloudless Mt. Fuji resting on the still grass in the foreground.

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Like many artists before and after, Ponting wasobsessed by Mt. Fuji. He provides pictures of it
alone, from Lake Shoji, Lake Motosu and from thewaterfalls at Shira-ito.
Another picture, featuring young women holding
Japanese umbrellas and riding in rickshaws,
required that Ponting ask two of his kurumaya toblock either side of this road while he was setting
up and taking the photograph.

Apparently, theincreasingly agitated crowds at each end of the street attracted the attention of the police who told him that
he was obstructing traffic, and would he kindly stop, and who then imposed a fine on him, his kurumaya
and the young women. Ponting writes that he paid all of the fines and that the total came to only six
shillings.
Interestingly, the day that In Lotus-Land Japan was published,
Ponting set out on an expedition that in many ways defined his
career. He had been asked by Robert Falcon Scott to be theofficial photographer of the “Terra Nova Expedition,” to the
Antarctic, which had an official goal of scientific exploration, butwhich was also, unofficially, considered to be a race to the South
Pole. During this expedition, Ponting created some of the moststrikingly beautiful images of the Antarctic ever put on film. He
never made it to the South Pole, which, as it turned out, wasfortunate. When Scott and his team finally did make it to thePole they found out that they had been beaten there by the
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Increasingly inclement
weather conditions and physical debilitation also prevented theirreturn. Scott and his team are presumed to have died in Antarctica in March of 1912.
Scott’s death came at the end of what many call the “Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration.” Soon the world
would be engulfed in a war that would call into question the very idea of heroes. In the summer of 1912,
the Emperor Meiji died, bringing to an end his eponymous era.
The final image presented here is of Herbert Ponting entertaining the members of the Scott expedition
aboard the Terra Nova with a “magic lantern” (an early projector) presentation of his photos from Japan.
In many ways this image embodies much of what has been discussed here. It is a picture of a traveler
becoming a guide. For a group of men heading toward the stark and inhospitable South Pole, Ponting’s

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interpretation of a tranquil and gentle Japan musthave seemed like an alluring vision indeed. For us
today, who know their fate, it is all the morepoignant.

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࠙ⴭ⪅⤂௓ࠚ
Rohe, Gregory L. ឡ▱Ꮫ㝔኱ᏛᩥᏛ㒊෸ᩍᤵࠋ⡿ᅜࢩ࢝ࢦฟ㌟ࠋࢥࣟࣥࣅ࢔኱Ꮫ኱Ꮫ㝔ᩥⱁᏛ◊✲⛉࢔࣓ࣜ࢝◊✲ᑓᨷಟኈㄢ⛬ಟ஢ࠋᖹᡂ 19 ᖺࡼࡾឡ▱Ꮫ㝔኱ᏛᩥᏛ㒊෸ᩍᤵࠋࢢ࣮ࣟࣂࣝⱥ
ㄒᏛ⛉ᡤᒓࠋឡ▱Ꮫ㝔኱Ꮫᅜ㝿஺ὶࢭࣥࢱ࣮ᖿ஦ࠋ୺࡞ⴭ᭩࡟ Charles Bird King and theIndian Gallery: Image and Perception in Nineteenth Century Native American Portraitureࠗⱁ⾡ᕤᏛ࡬ࡢㄏ࠸࠘ᒱ㜧᪂⪺♫௚ࠋ......................................................
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