MITFORD was now largely accepting Japan the way it was. He was revelling in the fact that he was there at such an exciting time and was proud of all the firsts he had notched up: first Westerner to see a Japanese Emperor, first to witness a hara-kiri, first to visit so many places. These things had made the Japan experience key to his sense of his own importance – he now had an emotional stake in the country, having stored enough memories to later be able to endlessly reminisce about the unrepeatable experiences he had had there. Indeed, he was already being revered for having seen Meiji: ‘I am quite a Lion as the man who saw the Son of Heaven and heard him speak’, he boasted to Parkes. ‘To every Japanese that comes, and they are not a few, I have to rehearse the scene.’

Unfortunately, having achieved this new level of contentment with Japan, he was plunged into another difficult phase. Now living in Osaka, he had been left to represent all the Western powers to the new Government single-handed – business that would normally have occupied whole Consulates of staff. Many lives would hang on how successfully he managed his negotiations with the Emperor's officials. He was also fighting for his own future. If he acquitted himself well, he knew he could gain a successful career in the diplomatic service. Osaka would make or break him.

Edo was still under the control of the ex-Shogun, but its castle would shortly be surrendered to the Imperial forces and it was gradually looking certain that they would eventually gain control of the whole country. Daimyō who could read the writing on the wall were voluntarily giving up their lands to the Emperor, something that was necessary if Japan was to establish a central government and a national revenue. Mitford hugely admired their actions seeing them as nobly fulfilling their obligations to the nation. He translated their long declaration (which he quoted in full in Memories because it was a document which ‘made history’), in a way that mirrored its epoch-making nature: ‘The Heaven and Earth belong to the Emperor … It is his to give and his to take away; of our own selves we cannot hold a foot of land, we cannot take a single man.