Mito Yashiki : a tale of old Japan, being a feudal romance descriptive of the decline of the Shogunate and of the downfall of the power of the Tokugawa family.

New York ; London : G.P. Putnam's Sons ; The Knickerbocker Press, 1896, ©1889., 1896. Fair. 3rd edition ; viii, 456 pp. ; 20 cm. ; similar to OCLC: 18708885 ; LC: PS3525.P268 ; red-brown cloth with black and gold lettering and designs ; covers much faded and worn ; shaken ; penciled name on front ep ; "In 1875, when I was in the service o f the Japanese Government at Tokio, it chanced that my place of residence was located north of the old Yedo castle grounds, while my office lay to the south of them, thus rendering it necessary for me to pass twice each day through the centre of tha t vast system of feudal fortification. One stormy day, as I was trudging homeward in company with an inveterate pedestrian--a young Englishman who persisted in taking 'constitutional exercise' in all kinds of weather--he suddenly halted at the brid ge that crossed the broad moat before the Sakurada gateway and exclaimed: 'Here is the spot where was enacted the most thrilling episode in modern Japanese history. On a day like this, about fourteen years ago, the de facto ruler of the Japanese empire was attacked at the head of this bridge, in the very midst of his guards, by a band of seventeen Mito romins, and was ignominously beheaded.'...Being deeply interested in his graphic account of the tragedy, I eagerly read up all the narratives.. .and came to the conclusion that the affair was worthy to be woven into the warp and aoof of a romance..."--preface ; stamps of the Department of the Navy, and bookplate of the Crew's Library of the U.S.S. New York, at this time, a CA-2 class armored cruiser laid down in 1893, seeing action in the Spanish American War, renamed the Saratoga in 1911, then the Rochester in 1917, decommissioned in 1937 and scuttled in 1941 to prevent capture by Japanese forces; a second U.S.S. New York, BB-37, was commissioned in 1914, and after World War I, was sent to the Yangtze River as a part of the American patrols which were featured in McKenna's Sand Pebbles novel, decommissioned in 1941 and later sunk in 1948. ; an unusual naval and China Service collectible ; FAIR