In 1890 the young painter and traveller Savage Landor set out alone on horseback to circle the island of Yezo, now Hokkaido, and cruise to the Kurile Islands. He records the coasts, rivers and volcanoes, the hardships of the trail and, above all, the Ainu villages where he lived: their festivals, bear ceremony, dress, homes and customs, observed through the racial theories of the 1890s.
A vivid if self-dramatising early record of Ainu life, of real interest to readers of Japan and its indigenous peoples. Download the free EPUB.