THE SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD SHOGUN Iemochi must have felt in despair when he received this harangue from Emperor Kōmei in 1864. His predecessors had enjoyed unquestioned authority since the Tokugawa dynasty had been founded in 1603 and the Emperors were consigned to impotent irrelevance in Kyoto. But the diminishing power of the Shogunate meant that Iemochi was too weak to argue with Kōmei but also too weak to do anything to expel the foreigners.

The Shogunate had become ‘effete’, in Mitford's opinion, the ‘mere slave’ of the Emperor. Japan's earlier rulers, he felt, would not have hesitated in the face of the challenge of dealing with the Western powers, but would ‘proudly have taken upon themselves the responsibility of giving the answer in one sense or the other’ – they would either have engaged with Westerners or got them out of Japan. But Iemochi had only been twelve when he became Shogun and never had the chance to become an effective leader, dying at the age of twenty, of beriberi, a disease which afflicted the upper classes in Japan. They ate polished rice which had had its husks taken off, removing the thiamine (vitamin B1), which we need to stay healthy. Ordinary people, who ate the husks, were spared this disease. The death occurred on 29 August, but was not officially announced until 28 September six days before Mitford's arrival in the country. Japan was therefore nominally in mourning when Mitford landed – he was told that Iemochi's officers could not shave or wash for twenty-one days, ‘so we hasten to get over our interviews before their Excellencies become too dirty. Luckily the weather is cool.’