ABSTRACT
To understand the tasks which Sir Harry Parkes faced on arriving at his new post it is first necessary to examine the nature of the regime which he faced, and the essential elements of Japan's dealings with Britain and the Western world. Despite similar policies of restricted trade and diplomacy, Japan and China had profoundly different and contrasting polities. To a nineteenth century European, one might appear to resemble the other, but their politics, like their languages, were only superficially alike. Just as a common calligraphy masked linguistic contrasts, so a shared suspicion of foreign trade concealed many differences.
