Book Review: Samurai Revolution By Romulus Hillsborough

The Dawn of Modern Japan as seen through the eyes of the Shōgun’s Last Samurai!

This book, based on twenty-five years of research by Romulus Hillsborough who spent sixteen years living in Japan, joins his growing portfolio of his other works on the pivotal characters and themes of the Bakumatsu Period and the Meiji Restoration bringing many of them together in a welcome work that covers the pivotal period that heralded the end of the Japanese feudal era and the beginning of the industrial and political modernisation of Japan.

Something of a tome ‘Samurai Revolution’ is written as two books. The first covers the conflicting interests of the Tokugawa Bakufu in Edo (modern day Tōkyō) and the Imperial Court in Kyōto and the inter clan alliances which had been forged nearly three hundred years before in the triumphs and

Anjin: The Shogun & The English Samurai At Sadler’s Wells London

A magnificent 3-hour stage production set in 17th Century Japan!

Gregory Doran’s production of ANJIN: THE SHOGUN & THE ENGLISH SAMURAI, written by Mike Poulton with Sho Kawai, will play eleven performances at Sadler’s Wells Theatre from 31 January to 9 February 2013, with the press night on Thursday 31 January.

William Adams, the “blue-eyed samurai” known in Japanese as Anjin, was an English maritime pilot. Washed ashore on a strange and exotic land, Anjin soon found himself as the trusted adviser to a powerful