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This essay analyses how two recent Japanese novels, Natsuki Ikezawa's Shizuka na Daichi (The Quiet Earth) (2003) and Yoko Tawada's Kyukei Jikan (Spherical Time) (2002), fictionally depict meetings between the Victorian travel writer Isabella Bird and the Japanese. In both works, Bird is a minor character, but nonetheless plays a crucial role in encouraging Japanese travelees to undertake their own boundary crossings. Examining closely how these two works partially rewrite Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880), I demonstrate that they seek not to criticise some of the problems in it, but to probe critically and disrupt discursive constructions of a monolithic Japan. In this respect, these two novels are interesting examples of how travel writing, a product of interactions between travellers and travelees, can sometimes influence the culture of the latter and generate a new kind of cross-cultural dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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