In this remarkable account of the life of Japan's last Shogun, the arrival of U.S. Commodore Perry's squadron is shown to be the spark that ignited the cataclysm that reached its climax with the fall of the Shogunate in 1868. This brought a 17 year-old boy emperor from the seclusion of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto to preside over what became a political and cultural revolution: with this, Japan's extraordinary modernisation began in earnest.