Isabella Bird - 2

I did the core research on Africa as a graduate student in 1963. For a professor in Wisconsin, Marvin Miracle, I read and reviewed every written document about sub Sahara Africa written before 1850. I collected all the economic references which were later used to create the core of our knowledge of African economics and trade.

I read several dozen explorers. So I have a good sense of how explorers attitudes and observations reflect the society they came from.

The most striking material that comes from reading Isabella Bird’s description of the backcountry of Japan is that like most explorers of her era, all other peoples were seen as inferior. The Japanese Buddhist and Shinto practices were seen as voodoo and prayers for greed as opposed to the inimitable virtues of Christianity. All morals on the part of the Japanese were inexplicable because they were not Christians.

All non-Europeans were inherently dishonest and scheming, incapable of aesthetic or technological accomplishment. When Isabella looked at the gardens behind her guest rooms the trees were horrible, distorted and disfigured. Europe had yet to discover the genius of Japanese bonsai or other Japanese abilities to cultivate and configure trees developed over centuries.

The Japanese never cheated Ms. Bird, but she saw skimming and bribery everywhere because that was the practice in Europe. She didn't speak Japanese. England was just beginning to understand sewer systems and sanitation and so Ms. Bird was rapturous whenever she saw sewers working well and sanitation carefully observed.

Lastly and most importantly historians describe the English, who came to America in the 1600's (think Thanksgiving) who could only eat what they ate previously in England in the 1600s.  The same was true for Ms. Bird in the 1870s. She only ate rice, often complaining about that, with eggs, tea, condensed milk and sugar. Several times, over months, she had a boiled chicken.

As a trained horticulturist she recognized all of the fruit and plants surrounding her from cabbage, radishes and mushrooms to carrots and eggplant. She recognized the fruits from apples to persimmons. She never tried any of this, fresh or pickled. The Japanese eat abundant fish and seaweed. She never tried any of it.

To this day the British have a very narrow range of tastes, even the royal family visiting San Francisco would have been happy eating at Denny's.