<p>How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it. <br /><br />Although the broad outlines of the story were familiar (as they will be to every reader) almost all the more detailed information was new to me. I thought the book was masterly in the intermeshing of the personal and the political, the quotidian and the spiritual, the psycho-analytic with the journalistic, the long-historical with the contemporary, and everywhere finding and highlighting the poetic and the aesthetic.</p>

- Neil MacGregor,

Elegantly written and compelling history of Japan's past century and a half

- Bill Emmott, Spectator

<p>Lucid and lyrical ... delivered with his flair for storytelling ... one of the best accounts I've<br />ever read of what happens - for better and worse - when a country's relationship with the world is abruptly renegotiated.</p>

- Alex Dudok de Wit, Telegraph