The Spell of Japan

The year is 1914. A distinguished couple had arrived overland two years previously from Europe via Russia and Korea to Yokohama and on to Tokyo. The gentleman, Mr. Larz Anderson, assumes the role of American ambassador to Japan. His wife, Isabel—a glamourous, Boston-born heiress—submerges herself in the rich, yet little known culture of Imperial Japan.

With ready access to Japanese high society, Isabel records court custom, art, costume and ritual as few Western visitors have before. Yet her lack of pretension and keen observation allows her to describe the life of the common people of old Japan in just as lucid prose.

The Spell of Japan takes the us through Japanese occupied Korea, to the gilded temples of Kyoto and the splendours of the Imperial court of Tokyo. An illuminating journey for the modern tourist, the armchair traveller and amateur historian alike.