A Diplomat in Japan

A brilliant linguist, Sir Ernest Satow (1843–1929) was recruited into the British consular service as a student interpreter in 1861. The following year he arrived in Japan, where he witnessed the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji restoration of imperial rule. Drafted in the 1880s while he was consul-general in Bangkok, this 1921 account is based on the voluminous diaries Satow kept whilst in Japan between 1862 and 1869. As an interpreter he was present at many of the meetings between the diplomatic and military representatives of the Great Powers and of the Shogunate. Satow gives his opinions of the various officials he met, and describes the rising tensions that led to conflict between the Shogunate and the Emperor, civil war, and the reassertion of the Emperor's power. Satow's classic Guide to Diplomatic Practice (1917) is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.