«Elegantly written and compelling history of Japan's past century and a half»

Bill Emmott, Spectator

«

Lucid and lyrical ... delivered with his flair for storytelling ... one of the best accounts I've
ever read of what happens - for better and worse - when a country's relationship with the world is abruptly renegotiated.

»

Alex Dudok de Wit, Telegraph

«

How much I admired it, what a lot I learned from it and, above all, how very much I enjoyed it.

Although the broad outlines of the story were familiar (as they will be to every reader) almost all the more detailed information was new to me. I thought the book was masterly in the intermeshing of the personal and the political, the quotidian and the spiritual, the psycho-analytic with the journalistic, the long-historical with the contemporary, and everywhere finding and highlighting the poetic and the aesthetic.

»

Neil MacGregor

«Richly embroidered, well-written text ... you will profit considerably from reading Japan Story.»

Christopher Ross, Literary Review

«A fresh, detailed, intimate, witty, and captivating tour across the evolving landscape of Japan over the past hundred and fifty years ... told with compassion and with a storyteller's wit and wisdom.»

Will Harris, Books and Bao

«Magisterial»

Best New Books to Read Christmas 2018, Tatler