While there are many differences

[asimm22]

I myself moved to Japan in 1983 and have lived here ever since. As I read now the accounts of Westerners who arrived at Nagasaki or Yokohama in 1858 or 1869 or 1880 or 1905, I recall my own vivid first impressions of the country 36 years ago. —they rode rickshas, I took commuter trains; those Victorians were shocked by the casual nudity, this Californian was surprised by how formally people dressed—our experiences were also similar in many ways. And those who, as I did, stayed for more than whatsapp lead a year or two and learned the language gradually came to see how their initial assessments had also been incomplete and sometimes biased.

Several times a week, I pass through the bustling Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, and in recent years I’ve noticed more and more foreign tourists taking pictures of that famous location. After reading travelers’ accounts from more than a century ago, I increasingly wonder how tourists today are perceiving this country that is now my home, and I speculate how people elsewhere, seeing those photos posted to Instagram and Twitter and Weibo, will come to view that intersection and this country. I never would have thought deeply about this, and I certainly wouldn’t be contrasting our experiences with those of 19th-century visitors, if it weren’t for the great collections of books that the Internet Archive makes available for anyone in the world to read.

Tom Gally was born in Pasadena, California, in 1957. Since moving to Japan, he has worked as a translator, teacher, lexicographer, and writer. He is now a professor in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo and has compiled a book of excerpts from travelers’ accounts to be titled Japan As They Saw It. The book can be read and downloaded at the book’s website.