Author, Researcher and Lecturer with a Passion for History, Music and Japan
In the subsiding summer heat of September 1887, two men continuously placed their steps on the stone pavement of the Tôkaidô East Coast Road to Tokyo. Between them, strung on a pole they carried over their shoulders, they bore what looked like an oblong box. They had walked 90 miles…
Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, although won at great cost and, one might say, by the skin of their teeth, represented a great triumph and gave rise to an upsurge in nationalism. By 1905 many Japanese were too young to remember the time of their country’s humiliating weakness in…
The Meiji Emperor was only sixteen when the Restoration of 1868 ended the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns and established the imperial court as the supreme authority. Personal rule by the emperor remained the ideal, but in fact around 20 men from the nobility and the domains involved in the…