Tales of Оld Japan

Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, First Baron Redesdale (1837 - 1916) was a British diplomat, collector and writer. Nicknamed Barty", he was the paternal grandfather of the Mitford sisters.

Entering the Foreign Office in 1858, Mitford was appointed Third Secretary of the British Embassy in St Petersburg. After service in the Diplomatic Corps in Shanghai, he went to Japan as second secretary to the British Legation at the time of the migration of the Japanese Seat of Power from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo, known as the "Meiji Restoration")

Lord Rededale served as secretary under Myburgh`s replacement, John Frederik Lowder. There he met Ernest Satow and wrote Tales of Old Japan (1871), a book credited with making such Japanese Classics as "The Forty-seven Ronin" first known to a wide Western public. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1873.

These stories of unheard devotion and bravery, love, concubines, wives, children and family values; These are stories for famous heroes and rituals, cheaters, pirates, people with hidden identity; For scary incidents among witchcraft and unexpected deliverances; In a mystical empire of crabs, monkeys, dogs, talking birds, and ghosts of dead people continue to enchant readers.

 
Illustrations of the book are custom-made by the author, painted by the Japanese painter Okeke, and later transferred to a tree by a famous engraver in Edo.