Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is a book by the English travel writer Isabella Bird in the form of
letters to her sister describing her journey from Tokyo to Hokkaido in 1878 when she was 47.
The book records in great detail her responses to Japanese houses clothing and customs and
the natural environment as they were during the early years of the Meiji Restoration. It also
has a long section describing her visits to the Ainu people and many passages describing what
seemed to her the extreme poverty of many Japanese outside the major cities.
