Samurai Trails : Toyo Press : 9789492722119 : 9492722119 : 21 Nov 2018 : Lucian Swift Kirtland (1881-1965), walking Japan's ancient T?kaid? and Nakasend? highroads on the eve of the First World War, is still very much the late-nineteenth century traveler, pith helmet and all. And while, like so many of his contemporaries, he is prone to the unabashed Orientalism of his day, he is thankfully free of the "eczema of reformers." Despite his determination to be of "extreme magnitude in the perspective," Kirkland soon falls head-over heel for Japan's irresistible charm, surprising us with his evocative, unprejudiced observations-of a group of men in conversation, of a whistful girl at a barber shop dreaming of another life. With Kirthland we discover a Japan that has by now all but disappeared, a rural and mystical landscape occupied by abandoned temples, thatched cottages, old inns that once hosted feudal lords on their way to the capital. It is a landscape inhabited by quintessentially Ja