Drawing on his (unpublished) letters to his father, this new study on A.B. Mitford focuses for the first time on his life in Japan from 1866 to 1870 and examines the part he played during one of the great turning points in world history: the 1868 revolution that saw the demise of Japan's 250-year feudal dynasty ruled over by a Shogun and its replacement by a modern state - the so-called Meiji Restoration.