ABSTRACT
Travel is integral to premodern Japanese literature, the body of poetry, diaries, tales, and other genres written in classical Japanese and Sino-Japanese before the nineteenth century. Travel writing developed together with the production of journals, diaries, and memoirs (nikki) and is closely linked to the composition of poetry. This chapter examines conventions and attributes of Japanese travel writing through a series of early canonical examples, focusing on the intertextual, accretionary nature of vernacular works depicting journeys and their referencing of famous locations.
