Unbeaten Tracks: Isabella Bird in Wonderland translation, transculturation, transcreation

Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was first published in 1880 as a compilation of letters Bird wrote to her sister Henrietta, describing her journey travelling from Tōhoku to Hokkaidō. In 1973, Unbeaten Tracks was abridged and translated by Takanashi Kenkichi, and since then, there have been new translations and re-creations of Bird as a character in Japanese novels, reading guides, and most notably, in Sassa Taiga’s manga Unbeaten Tracks that was initially published in the magazine Haruta.Footnote1This paper examines Unbeaten Tracks through Isabella Bird’s original writings as well as the French and Japanese/English manga adaptations. It explores the challenges of translation as a political and socio-cultural process that highlights the ways in which translation is a dynamic and arbitrary process. The aim of this paper is to investigate Unbeaten Tracks, both the original work and the manga re-creations as translational, transcultural, and transcreational processes that engage with ideologies, identities, and cross-cultural understandings.