Tales of Old Japan

The forty-seven ronin, the ghost stories, the sermons and an eyewitness account of a ritual suicide the author was required to attend as a British diplomat. Mitford was in Japan in the first years after the country opened and wrote down what he was shown before anyone else could. This edition is bound with a gallery of 25 plates by painters including Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Hiroshige and Itō Jakuchū, and its 35 in-text illustrations have been restored and coloured.