Michael Wise 
Travellers’ Tales of Old Japan 

Travellers in search of the unexpected found it in Old Japan. Here was a strange land indeed, where women blackened their teeth, men wore tattoos in lieu of clothing, and the whole family bathed together "with as much freedom as a flock of ducks". Visitors came in thousands and eagerly put pen to paper, commenting on everything Japanese, from curios to coolies, sake to samurai, etiquette to earthquakes. They left behind-in letters, diaries and memoirs-personal impressions of Old Japan, sometimes as revealing of the writers themselves as the country they came to visit. This book features 74 of these traveller’s tales-many of them funny, others serious, but all a pleasure to read.