There is no doubt that this sixth volume in the Japan Society’s highly regarded Britain and Japan series contains many ‘long overdue’ essays of leading personalities with links to Britain and Japan that will be welcomed by the researcher and general reader alike – from the opening essay on Churchill and Japan by Eiji Seki, to the concluding account by Rikki Kersten of the distinguished intellectual liberal Maruyama Masao’s close relationship with Richard Storry and Oxford in particular and his interests in Britain in general. Containing a total of thirty-three entries, thoughtfully and painstakingly compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi, there may well be a case for arguing that the best has been kept until last. Indeed, by way of an ‘Envoi’ the book concludes with an account of the Beatles visit to Tokyo in 1965, including a facsimile report for H.M. Government by the British Embassy’s then first secretary, Dudley Cheke. Also of special interest are Hugh Cortazzi’s portraits of Morita Akio and Honda Shoichiro , as well as John Hatcher’s fascinating record of Ian Fleming’s 1959 five-week visit to Japan on behalf of the Sunday Times. The volume is divided up thematically and includes an Index of Biographical Portraits published to date by the Japan Society, and by way of appendix, a highly significant report by Robin Mountfield on the Nissan Negotiations of 1980-84, which resulted in the biggest foreign investment in car manufacturing in Britain.

Annotation. There is no doubt that this sixth volume in the Japan Society & rsquo;s highly regarded Britain and Japan series contains many & lsquo;long overdue & rsquo; essays of leading personalities with links to Britain and Japan that will be welcomed by the researcher and general reader alike & ndash; from the opening essay on Churchill and Japan by Eiji Seki, to the concluding account by Rikki Kersten of the distinguished intellectual liberal Maruyama Masao & rsquo;s close relationship with Richard Storry and Oxford in particular and his interests in Britain in general. Containing a total of thirty-three entries, thoughtfully and painstakingly compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi, there may well be a case for arguing that the best has been kept until last. Indeed, by way of an & lsquo;Envoi & rsquo; the book concludes with an account of the Beatles visit to Tokyo in 1965, including a facsimile report for H M Government by the British Embassy & rsquo;s then first secretary, Dudley Cheke. Also of special interest are Hugh Cortazzi & rsquo;s portraits of Morita Akio and Honda Shoichiro, as well as John Hatcher & rsquo;s fascinating record of Ian Fleming & rsquo;s 1959 five-week visit to Japan on behalf of the Sunday Times. The volume is divided up thematically and includes an Index of Biographical Portraits published to date by the Japan Society, and by way of appendix, a highly significant report by Robin Mountfield on the Nissan Negotiations of 1980-84, which resulted in the biggest foreign investment in car manufacturing in Britain.

This latest volume of leading figures in the history of Anglo-Japanese relations offers a classic menu of personalities, themes and events (in all 25 contributions). Contents include the writings of the Cambridge scholar Carmen Blacker and leading historian William Beasley; British military observer and Times reporter of the Russo-Japanese War General Sir Ian Hamilton; philosophers Arnold Toynbee, Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw; the Chosu students Inoue Kaoru and Yamao Yozo who were later key figures in the Meiji period modernization of Japan; and Walter Dening, scholar and missionary. Subjects treated include horse breeding and horse-racing, the Japanese influence on British architects, the beginnings of golf in Japan and Japanese gardeners in Britain.

Sir Ernest Satow's well-known best-seller "A Diplomat in Japan" (first published in 1921) which is still widely available in paperback is based mainly on his diaries ("journals") for 1862-69. The unabridged diaries in this volume, carefully transcribed from original documents held at the U.K. National Archives and published for the first time on lulu.com, tell the story of Ernest Satow's subsequent years in Japan (and home leaves in Britain, France, Germany and Italy) up until the start of 1883. This fully annotated book includes an introduction by former U.K. Ambassador to Japan Sir Hugh Cortazzi, six black & white illustrations, a map, a select bibliogaphy, a chronology and an index. (This book is part of a series in which some of the extensive and hitherto unpublished Satow Papers are being made available in print to scholars and the general reading public by Ian Ruxton.)

The distinguished British scholar-diplomat Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929) was one of the most prominent and pre-eminent Japanologists in the Victorian era when the subject was newly created as Japan began to open its doors to foreigners from the mid-1850s. He shared this honour with Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) and the two addressees of the letters reproduced here by permission of the U.K. National Archives: co-worker William George Aston (1841-1911) and Frederick Victor Dickins (1838-1915). This book is part of a series in which Ian Ruxton is making some of the extensive Satow Papers publicly available for the first time. It includes an introduction by Professor Peter Kornicki of the East Asia Institute at the University of Cambridge, eight black & white illustrations, 166 annotations, two appendices, a select bibliography and a full index for ease of reference. (xvi + 330 pp.) Reasonably priced for students and researchers. Library of Congress Control Number: 2008901176

"In the late 1800s, as Japanese leaders mulled over the usefulness of religion in modernizing their country, they chose to invite Unitarian missionaries to Japan. This book spotlights one facet of debates sparked by the subsequent encounter between Unitarianism and Buddhism—an intersection that has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Focusing on the cascade of events triggered by the missionary presence of the American Unitarian Association on Japanese soil between 1887 and 1922, Michel Mohr’s study sheds new light on this formative time in Japanese religious and intellectual history. Drawing on the wealth of information contained in correspondence sent and received by Unitarian missionaries in Japan, as well as periodicals, archival materials, and Japanese sources, Mohr shows how this missionary presence elicited unprecedented debates on “universality” and how the ambiguous idea of “universal truth” was utilized by missionaries to promote their own cultural and ethnocentric agendas. At the turn of the twentieth century this notion was appropriated and reformulated by Japanese intellectuals and religious leaders, often to suit new political and nationalistic ambitions."

The continuing success of this series, highly regarded by scholars and the general reader alike, has prompted The Japan Society to commission this fourth volume, devoted as before to the lives of key people, both British and Japanese, who have made significant contributions to the development of Anglo-Japanese relations. The appearance of this volume brings the number of portraits published to over one hundred. The portraits cover diplomats (from Mori Arinori to Sir Francis Lindley), businessmen (from William Keswick to Lasenby Liberty), engineers and teachers (from W. E. Ayrton to Henry Spencer Palmer), scholars and writers (from Sir Edwin Arnold to Ivan Morris), as well as journalists, judo masters and the aviator Lord Semphill. In all, there are a total of 34 contributions.