ABSTRACT
In marked contrast to Miss Bird, another foreign writer, E.H. House an American journalist, became an official propagandist for the Japanese Government and sought to attack British policy in general, and Parkes, its physical manifestation. House had arrived in Japan in 1870 after being captivated by the 'simple goodness' of Japanese he had met in the United States. In 1874 he sailed with the Japanese expedition to Taiwan and in the following year set to work to presentJapan's case to the Englishspeaking world. Within twelve months this prolific journalist published The Shimonoseki Affair, The Bombardment of Kagoshima and The Formosan Expedition, all pamphlets designed to justify Japanese policies and to attack the past activities of the Western Powers. Two years later, aided by money from the Japanese Government, he founded the Tokio Times a weekly journal which
used techniques of careful news selection, idealistic rhetoric, and bitter criticism to forward Japan's claims for treaty revision, and to castigate Sir Harry Parkes as 'a living and breathing thorn in the side of Japan', whose career had been 'one long series of exactions, oppressions, insults and humiliations. '2
