tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">332

CHAPTER XXVIII

Harakiri—Negotiations for Audience of the Mikado at Kioto 343

CHAPTER XXIX

Massacre of French Sailors at Sakai 351

CHAPTER XXX.

Kioto—Audience of the Mikado 356

CHAPTER XXXI

Return to Yedo and Presentation of the Minister's New Credentials at Ozaka 364

CHAPTER XXXII

Miscellaneous Incidents—Mito Politics 373

CHAPTER XXXIII

Capture of Wakamatsu and Entry of the Mikado into Yedo 386

CHAPTER XXXIV

Enomoto with the Runaway Tokugawa Ships Seizes Yezo 395

CHAPTER XXXV

1869—Audience of the Mikado at Yedo 400

CHAPTER XXXVI

Last Days in Tokio and Departure for Home 409

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Last of the Shoguns Frontispiece

Sir Ernest Satow—1869 56

Sir Ernest Satow—1903 56

Payment of the Indemnity for the Murder of Richardson 80

Kagoshima Harbour: Bombardment 90-91

The Straits of Shimonoseki 106-107

Interior of a Japanese Battery after the Landing of the Allied Naval Forces 112

Daimio of Cho-shiu and His Heir 184

Cho-shiu Councillors 184

Group Photographed during a Visit to Ozaka 192

Niiro Giobu, a Satsuma Councillor 272

Katsu Awa no Kami 272

The Design on the Cover of this Book is the Family Crest of
the Tokugawa Shôguns.

A DIPLOMAT IN JAPAN

A DIPLOMAT IN JAPAN

CHAPTER I

APPOINTMENT AS STUDENT INTERPRETER AT YEDO (1861)

My thoughts were first drawn to Japan by a mere accident. In my eighteenth year an elder brother brought home from Mudie's Library the interesting account of Lord Elgin's Mission to China and Japan by Lawrence Oliphant, and the book having fallen to me in turn, inflamed my imagination with pictures verbal and coloured of a country where the sky was always blue, where the sun shone perpetually, and where the whole duty of man seemed to consist in lying on a matted floor with the windows open to the ground towards a miniature rockwork garden, in the company of rosy-lipped black-eyed and attentive damsels—in short, a realised fairyland. But that I should ever have a chance of seeing these Isles of the Blest was beyond my wildest dreams. An account of Commodore Perry's expedition, which had preceded Lord Elgin's Mission, came in my way shortly afterwards, and though much more sober in its outward appearance and literary style, only served to confirm the previous impression. I thought of nothing else from that time onwards. One day, on entering the library of University College, London, where I was then studying, I found lying on the table a notice that three nominations to student-interpreterships in China and Japan had been