[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE SHOGUNS Tokugawa Yoshinobu (Keiki)] A DIPLOMAT IN JAPAN THE INNER HISTORY OF THE CRITICAL YEARS IN THE EVOLUTION OF JAPAN WHEN THE PORTS WERE OPENED AND THE MONARCHY RESTORED, RECORDED BY A DIPLOMATIST WHO TOOK AN ACTIVE PART IN THE EVENTS OF THE TIME, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS PERSONAL EXPERIENCES DURING THAT PERIOD BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR ERNEST SATOW G.C.M.G., LL.D., D.C.L.; British Minister at Peking 1900-05; Formerly Secretary of the British Legation at Tokio WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS LONDON SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 1921 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH PREFACE The first portion of this book was written at intervals between 1885 and 1887, during my tenure of the post of Her Majesty's minister at Bangkok. I had but recently left Japan after a residence extending, with two seasons of home leave, from September 1862 to the last days of December 1882, and my recollection of what had occurred during any part of those twenty years was still quite fresh. A diary kept almost uninterruptedly from the day I quitted home in November 1861 constituted the foundation, while my memory enabled me to supply additional details. It had never been my purpose to relate my diplomatic experiences in different parts of the world, which came finally to be spread over a period of altogether forty-five years, and I therefore confined myself to one of the most interesting episodes in which I have been concerned. This comprised the series of events that culminated in the restoration of the direct rule of the ancient line of sovereigns of Japan which had remained in abeyance for over six hundred years. Such a change involved the substitution of the comparatively modern city of Yedo, under the name of Tôkiô, for the more ancient Kiôto, which had already become the capital long before Japan was heard of in the western world.