A Reader In Edo Period Travel
Publisher: Global Oriental
Published: September 30, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 3478
ISBN-13: 9781901903232
Subjects: Classic travel writing; Modern - 17th Century; Literary Criticism; Travel - Foreign; Japan; Asia - Japan; Asian - Japanese; Edo period, 1600-1868; History and criticism; Japanese literature; Travel in literature
Description: "Largely ignored hitherto by Western scholars, Plutschow's Edo Period Travel provides the first in-depth study of the subject which is centred on fifteen of the period's most notable travellers, some of whom are well known in other fields - as intellectuals, artists, poets, folklorists and natural scientists, for example - but rarely, if at all, as travellers." "The first traveller put in the spotlight is the celebrated intellectual and botanist Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714) and the last is the explorer of Ezo (now Hokkaido) and government official Matsuura Takeshiro (1818-88). Such was the thirst for knowledge in the Edo period that some travel accounts (estimated to number over 2000) became best-sellers in their day, not least for their voyeuristic appeal, including those of Kaibara Ekiken and Tachibana Nankei, which are included in this volume." "Of particular interest also is the author's discussion on the nature of this new travel writing and the self-centred observation and 'seeing' that developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which he calls the 'Japanese Enlightenment'."--BOOK JACKET.