Isabella Bird’s ‘Unbeaten Tracks in Japan’: The struggle to find a competent guide (Part 3)

Isabella Bird arrived in Japan in May 1878 (the 11th year of the Meiji era). After completing the necessary entry formalities, she spent some time based in Yokohama, preparing for the long journey that lay ahead. At the time, a number of American and British residents lived in Yokohama, and among those on whom she relied was Dr. Hepburn, an American missionary and physician later renowned for devising what came to be known as the Hepburn system of romanization.

Dr. Hepburn had first come to Japan in 1859, in the closing years of the Tokugawa period, and during the Namamugi Incident of 1862, in which a British merchant was killed by armed samurai, he attended to the wounded. In the following year he opened a small private school in the Yokohama Settlement, which was later to become the source from which Meiji Gakuin and Ferris Girls’ Junior & Senior High School would develop. By 1867 he had compiled the first Japanese-English dictionary published in Japan, and among the American and British residents of Yokohama, he was widely regarded as the man most thoroughly versed in the country and its people.

At this time Hepburn’s residence stood on the heights of Yamate, where the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery now lies, and it was here that Bird stayed for about a week. She first laid her plans for the journey before him. He might have seemed the ideal counsellor, yet he appears to have opposed the undertaking, a circumstance upon which Bird herself comments with a trace of dissatisfaction. Let us turn to “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.”

As no English lady has yet travelled alone through the interior, my project excites a very friendly interest among my friends, and I receive much warning and dissuasion, and a little encouragement. The strongest, because the most intelligent, dissuasion comes from Dr. Hepburn, who thinks that I ought not to undertake the journey, and that I shall never get through to the Tsugaru Strait. If I accepted much of the advice given to me, as to taking tinned meats and soups, claret, and a Japanese maid, I should need a train of at least six pack-horses!

Bird’s journey was, in its essence, a solitary one. She was determined to reduce her baggage to the barest minimum, relying as far as possible upon the resources of the places through which she travelled, and in this resolve, she was unwilling to listen even to Hepburn’s counsels. Yet a minimum requirement remained unavoidable: She had to secure the services of an interpreter-assistant, and the search for a suitable and capable person thus became her first major undertaking.

At that time in Japan, individuals able to speak English with sufficient fluency to allow for nuanced communication with foreigners were exceedingly rare. Still, in ports such as Yokohama or Kobe, it seemed reasonable to hope that a young assistant might be found — someone with a measure of experience, and with the resilience required to accompany a traveller on a long and demanding journey. Let us now trace the course of events that led to her eventual choice.

Several of my kind new acquaintances interested themselves about the (to me) vital matter of a servant interpreter, and many Japanese came to “see after the place.” The speaking of intelligible English is a sine qua non, and it was wonderful to find the few words badly pronounced and worse put together, which were regarded by the candidates as a sufficient qualification. Can you speak English? “Yes.” What wages do you ask? “Twelve dollars a month.” This was always said glibly, and in each case sounded hopeful. Whom have you lived with? A foreign name distorted out of all recognition, as was natural, was then given. Where have you travelled?

This question usually had to be translated into Japanese, and the usual answer