The original version of this popular travelogue was published in Czech in 1896. Josef Kořenský, a Czech traveller, naturalist and photographer who travelled almost all over the world, set out to acquire ethnographic material for a private collector whose collections later became an essential part of the National Museum.
Josef Kořenský's observations are very rich in information and cover many aspects of Japan at that time - botany, zoology, ornithology, entomology, geology, volcanology and astronomy, as well as religion, history, architecture and culture.