Victorian Women's Travel Writing on Meiji Japan

Victorian Women's Travel Writing on Meiji Japan: Hospitable Friendship examines forgotten stories of cross-cultural friendship and intimacy between Victorian female travel writers and Meiji Japanese. Drawing on unpublished primary sources and contemporary Japanese literature hithero untranslated into English it highlights the open subjectivity and addective relationality of Isabella Bird, Mary Crawford Fraser, and Marie Stopes in their interactions with Japanese hosts. Victorian Women's Travel Writing on Meiji Japan demonstates how travel narratives and literary works about non-colonial Japan complicate and challenge Oriental stereotypes and imperial binaries. It traces the shifts in the representation of Japan in Victorian discourse from obsequious mousmé to virile samurai alongside transitions in the Anglo-Japanese bilateral relationship and global geopolitical events. Considering the ethical and political implications of how Victorian women wrote about their Japanese friends, it