Sir Edwin Arnold, 1832–1904: A Year in Japan, 1889–90

We have had a delightful surprise, wrote Mrs Mary Fraser in December 1889 from the British Embassy in Tokyo. A visit from Edwin Arnold and his daughter! The poet was in Japan for the first time, and had so much fallen in love with Tokyo that he had taken a house for six months. There he insisted, much to his daughter’s horror, on ‘sleeping on the mats Japanese fashion’. ¹