Japan closed its doors to foreigners for over two hundred years because of religious and political instability caused by Christianity. By 1859, foreign residents were once again living in treaty ports in Japan, but edicts banning Christianity remained enforced until 1873. Drawing on an impressive array of English and Japanese sources, Ion investigates a crucial era in the history of Japanese-American relations – the formation of Protestant missions. He reveals that the transmission of values and beliefs was not a simple matter of acceptance or rejection: missionaries and Christian laymen persisted in the face of open hostility and served as important liaisons between East and West.

Hamish Ion is a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is also author of The Cross in the Dark Valley: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in the Japanese Empire, 1931-1945; The Cross and the Rising Sun, Volume 2: The British Protestant Missionary Movement in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1865-1945; and The Cross and the Rising Sun, Volume 1: The Canadian Protestant Missionary Movement in The Japanese Empire, 1872-1931.

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Indispensable read for any scholar of the Meiji era or Christianity in Japan.

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 37/1