Societies sometimes change quickly. Not always, and the passage of time is no guarantee of change, good or bad. There are societies where a quagmire of the same old continues for a very long time.

I’m currently reading Isabella Bird’s ‘Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.’ Bird was an English traveler in the late 19th century. One of the things that have changed in the last 150 years is the ability for women to travel without a chaperone, a guard, or male relative. When Bird was traveling, in the 1880s and 1890s, most women were heavily accompanied, if they traveled at all.

In this book, we are exposed to a Japan vastly different from the country we are exposed to now: different especially since the end of WW2, a country that made conscious efforts to change, and accomplished that goal.

Earlier this summer, I read her account of traveling in Tibet. Her Tibetan journey made use of a guide, but no other men to assist. She does the same in her travels in Japan, making use of her faithful servant Ito, and going to areas where most of the Japanese had never seen a foreigner, much less a woman foreigner.

Bird is an insightful, sympathetic, and careful writer. She is not afraid to discuss problems in her journeys, but is likewise careful to seek to make judgements about a place on that society’s own terms.

A number of her books are available free or very inexpensively on Kindle.