The Diaries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow, 1861-1869

PUBLISHED BY EUREKA PRESS, TOKYO, AND DISTRIBUTED BY ROUTLEDGE OUTSIDE JAPAN.

The scholar and diplomat Sir Ernest Satow was the best-known Westerner who lived in Meiji Japan. Although he rose to become British Minister to Japan, the most interesting part of his career was the start of it, when he witnessed, and in a small way influenced, the fall of the bakufu and the Meiji Restoration.

He wrote an account of this in a memoir called A Diplomat in Japan in 1921, which was based on the diarie...