WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
A Journal from Japan: A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist cover

A Journal from Japan: A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist

Chapter 9: Transcriber's Note
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A scientist’s daily journal records fieldwork on fossils and coal mines alongside vivid travel impressions of landscapes, towns, temples, and everyday life in Japan. Entries combine technical notes about collecting and logistics with attempts to learn the language and to engage directly with local people, admitting moments of impatience and subsequent regret. Observations contrast traditional aesthetics—gardens, cherry blossoms, ritual practices—with the pressures of modernization and practical change. The narrative balances practical scientific purpose, candid personal reflection, and visual description, often accompanied by sketches and plates that illuminate scenes and specimens encountered.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This does not hold for Westernised places like Tokio, as I afterwards discovered, where the European method of clapping is much in vogue.

[2] The native name for the mail-cart-like hand-carriage I called a rickshaw at first. It is only in Yokohama and such Europeanised places that the word rickshaw is understood.

[3] I now know that I ought to have given very much more than three times the price to the peasants had I been anywhere but in the most unsophisticated parts.

[4] Betto, name for native groom.

[5] An account of this has appeared in the Transactions of the Manchester Philosophical Society, 1909.


 

 

Transcriber's Note

Illustrations have been moved next to the text which they illustrate, and may not match the locations in the List of Illustrations. A duplicate "INDEX" heading has been removed from the text.

The following apparent typographical errors have been corrected:

  • p. 88 "princesess" changed to "princesses"
  • p. 119 "intosuch" changed to "into such"
  • p. 127 "solid rock." changed to "solid rock,"
  • p. 136 "feruske" changed to "feruské"
  • p. 177 "(who leave on Friday" changed to "(who leave on Friday)"
  • p. 236 "Baron K——" changed to "Baron K——"
  • p. 279 "159, 175," changed to "159, 175;"

The following possible errors have been left as printed:

  • p. 86 went picnics
  • p. 166 Kyshyu
  • p. 187 When I get
  • p. 244 beach! but I
  • p. 263 the F----s

The following are inconsistently used in the text:

  • foothold and foot-hold
  • footpath and foot-path
  • Fujii and Fuji
  • Fujisan and Fuji-san
  • midday and mid-day
  • seaweed and sea-weed
  • tradespeople and trades-people
  • workshop and work-shop