KAWADA RYOKICHI -- JEANNIE EADIE'S SAMURAI: The Life and Times of a Meiji Entrepreneur and Agricultural Pioneer, by Andrew Cobbing and Masataro Itami. Global Oriental, 2006, 288 pp., £35 (cloth). FALLING BLOSSOM: A British Officer's Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman, by Peter Pagnamenta and Momoko Williams, Century, (Random House Group), 2006, 314 pp., £12.99 (cloth).

In the first hundred years or so after the end of the Tokugawa Period there were strong objections against interracial marriages in Japan, especially among the new elite. Yet there were still a number of well-known and successful interracial marriages as well as some failures.

One outstanding example of a successful Anglo-Japanese match was that of Mutsu Hirokichi, son of Mutsu Munemitsu, the Japanese foreign minister, and Ethel (later known as Countess Iso Mutsu). Ethel was the daughter of Hirokichi's landlord in Cambridge.

Although his father forbade the marriage, when Hirokichi was appointed Japanese Consul in San Francisco, he persuaded Ethel to join him. (They had not seen each other for some years.) They eventually married, and Hirokichi became Counselor in London responsible for Japanese participation in the Anglo-Japanese exhibition at Shepherds Bush in 1910.