Private Correspondence Between Sir Harry Parkes and Edmund Hammond, 1865-1868 : Edition Synapse : 9781138393608 : 1138393606 : 26 Apr 2019 :   This is a new series which publishes for the first time the correspondences of Sir Harry Smith Parkes (1828 ? 1885) the second British Minister of Japan, and includes the complete transcriptions of his ?private' letters to and from Edmund Hammond, permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was the decision maker about major issues in the British relation to Asia, and his successors at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chronologically arranged, the series covers all such letters during his 18 years in Japan and with the first volume for Bakumatsu, the end of the Shogunate era. Parkes arrived in Japan in 1865 as the second Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul General of the United Kingdom to Japan and stayed at the position till 1883. He was one of the few who observed Japan during its turbulent period of Westernization, and suppo