How Britain helped Japan move from feudalism to join the modern community of nations. Covers the Bombardment of Shimonoseki, the appalling and bloody murder of Charles Lenox Richardson, the Bombardment of Kagoshima and other events leading to the Meiji Restoration. With the multiple backgrounds - mythological, cultural, historical, geographic, naval, military, diplomatic, and more - painted in. This book will fasicnate you, inform you, horrify you and entertain you. You will be drawn into the heady ferment of the *bakumatsu*, when Japan was thrust, willy-nilly, into the modern world. and this was not one-way traffic: see how the culture and diplomacy of the West was influenced by Japan.