Abstract
The first Europeans to set foot in Japan were Portuguese traders and missionaries in the middle of the sixteenth century, but more than seventy years were to pass before Britain first came into contact with Japan. In 1613 the East India Company of London opened a trading post in Hirado, which was then a small port in the north-western part of Kyushu, but for various reasons it did not prosper and it was closed down in 1623. From that time until 1854, when the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty was signed, contacts between Britain and Japan were negligible and British officials for the most part considered Japan to be unimportant. It was, therefore, only after 1854 that Britain and Japan began to enjoy formal diplomatic relations. In 1868 the sovereigns of the two countries came into direct communication with each other for the first time and this was followed just one year later by the first meeting between members of the British royal and Japanese imperial families. What had happened since 1850 to make these startling developments possible in such a short space of time?