This is an account of life in the foreign communities and former Foreign Settlements or Concessions in Japan that flourished after Japan was opened to foreign trade in 1859. It tells of the imposters, the eccentrics, and the scandals, no less than the achievements of the scholars, the merchants, and the diplomats who contributed so much to the development of modern Japan.Here you will meet Townsend Harris, the first U.S. Consul General to Japan, the Grand Duke Alexander, and many other less well...
Here are twenty-five tales about the Foreign Settlements or Concessions in Japan following the opening of the country to foreign trade in 1859, and an additional ten strange stories that revoke around those times. The tales are historically accurate, sociologically significant and, most important of all, eminently readable.These Tales of Foreign Settlements in Japan are the product of years of painstaking and scholarly research by a writer who is a business man and a recognized authority on the...
Prowling among these stories about Japan one finds riffraff and gentlemen, pirates and warriors, saints and sinners, smugglers and legitimate businessmen.All those, in fact, who made up the foreign communities of Japan in the early days. Harold S. Williams tells about them with the same inimitable humor, irony, drama and whimsy that made his earlier Tales of the Foreign Settlements such a popular success. With due regard for historical accuracy he recreates those fantastic days and the furor and...