Japan Story

How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it. 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.

Neil MacGregor

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

Bill Emmott, Spectator

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

Alex Dudok de Wit, Telegraph

Richly embroidered, well-written text ... you will profit considerably from reading Japan Story.

Christopher Ross, Literary Review

A fresh, detailed, intimate, witty, and captivating tour across the evolving landscape of Japan over the past hundred and fifty years ... told with compassion and with a storyteller's wit and wisdom.

Will Harris, Books and Bao

Magisterial

Best New Books to Read Christmas 2018, Tatler