The Japanese Chronicles

In The Japanese Chronicles, Swiss travel writer and photographer Nicolas Bouvier shares his intimate experience of Japan. Based on three decades of travel throughout the islands, his reports, recollections, and reflections take the reader beyond the commonplace and into an unexpected landscape.

Whether describing village festivals or the suburbs of Kyoto, retelling Japanese myth and history, composing poems, reflecting on Noh performances, or sketching memorable portraits in a few deft words, Bouvier takes the reader with him into the heart of his experience of the land of the rising sun.



Nicolas Bouvier was born in 1929 near Geneva. Although he was an exquisite traveller and the greatest Swiss travel writer of the 20th century, he was not a restless character, and died in Geneva in 1998. In 1953 he set off to meet a friend in Yugoslavia without waiting for the result of his degree. The account of the journey they made to Pakistan was published some eight years later, as The Way of the World. Bouvier continued, through India and Ceylon and thence to Japan. The Japanese Chronicles were published in their final version in 1975.