Note 24 — A DESCRIPTION OF JAPAN[24]
Reading edition
From the "Travels." The text of this, the most famous perhaps of all books of travel, has come down to us in an extremely corrupt state. Written as it was about 250 years before the invention of printing, innumerable copies in manuscript form were put into circulation, some in French, some in Italian, some in German and some in Latin. French is believed to be the language in which it originally was composed, but this has not been definitely proven. More than eighty copies in manuscript are still extant. A Latin version was printed in Basel in 1532. The first English translation appears to be one that was made by John Frampton, published in London in 1579. An English version by W. Marsden appeared in 1818.