The Deer Cry Pavilion

"From 1870 onwards, increasing numbers of westerners arrived to help the Japanese build their modern industrialised state. There were teachers and doctors, missionaries and military officers, diplomats, scientists and engineers, travellers and merchants, whose motives ranged from the fiercely evangelical to the downright mercenary. Mrs Barr has drawn extensively upon their spirited first-hand accounts to trace the development of schools and communications, trade and diplomacy, missionary endeavour and technological achievement, and she selects from the light hearted accounts by globe-trotters, the informal records of shipping clerks, consular officials and local journalists to complete the colourful mosaic."--Dust jacket flap.