author

Lucian Swift Kirtland

1881–1965

Best known for his vivid travel writing on Japan and East Asia, he brought a reporter’s eye and a wanderer’s curiosity to the places he described. His books capture both the excitement of early twentieth-century travel and the attitudes of the era that shaped his work.

1 Audiobook

Samurai Trails: A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road

Samurai Trails: A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road

by Lucian Swift Kirtland

About the author

Born in Poland, Ohio, in 1881, Lucian Swift Kirtland was an American writer, journalist, and traveler. Sources available here identify him as a Yale graduate and connect him with newspaper and publishing work in Minneapolis before extended travel in Siberia, the Far East, Japan, and other parts of Asia.

He is most closely associated with travel books including Samurai Trails: A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road and Finding the Worth While in the Orient. His writing is remembered for detailed, on-the-ground descriptions of landscapes, customs, and journeys across Asia, written from the perspective of an early twentieth-century American observer.

Kirtland also appears in Library of Congress records alongside photojournalist Helen Johns Kirtland, whom he married in 1917; both were connected with reporting work in Europe during and after World War I. He died in 1965.