THE STUDY OF travel and travel books should be viewed through a scientific prism and the aim of this book is to do just that, by focusing on Isabella Bird's life-long travel career, particularly her trip to Japan in 1878, and the resulting Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. I do not know if I have been able to convey this adequately in the limited space available here but hope that I may at least have made my basic position clear, which is that there is a serious problem in our having come this far without that insight, and that we have to distance ourselves from prevailing views both for Bird's and our own sake. I think that I have also been able to go some way to showing that this book has capitalised on my ‘Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, The Complete Translation’ and is closely knit with it.

I propose to write about how even more enjoyment can be had from reading Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by focusing on an image or a word, but that will have be when a suitable opportunity arises, as the basic reality of her journey only emerges in the company of a book that explains it. I hope that day is not too far off.

In the Footsteps of Isabella Bird: Adventures in Twin Time Travel, my compilation of photographs with English and Japanese text, is a Heibonsha publication that appeared at the same time as this book. It is the core of my research into Isabella Bird and as such is inseparably related to it and to my other translations and articles.

Her actual books are reproduced in it, and it contains numerous detailed maps, views, illustrations and other items connected with her journeys. The photographs in the exhibition I mentioned in Chapter 1 are a permanent record that will, I hope, interest a wider audience in the idea of twin time travel. Scenery, naturally, always forms the backdrop to any of her journeys and a comparison by way of a photo-montage of the situation then and now should enable the viewer to get a better feel for her exploits. I would be very pleased if it proved popular. A book cannot be judged by its cover, as it does not make of its subject something it is not, but Bird's journey tells its own story.