In a series of imagined conversations on summer days, a Japanese gentleman answers the questions of English ladies and friends about his country: its poetry and flowers, the forty-eight-card game played by month, the place of women, the samurai spirit, religion and manners. Baron Suematsu, a Cambridge-educated statesman then living in London, wrote it to make Japan intelligible to the West.
A charming Edwardian introduction to Japanese culture by one of Japan’s own diplomats. Download the free EPUB.