This two–volume collection brings together contemporary documentation and more recent scholarship to give a broad picture of the Japanese Treat Ports – Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Hakodate, Shimoda and Niigata, Tokyo and Osaka – and their inhabitants at work and play. The material selected, together with the introduction and the bibliography, will show how the ports’ existence and the Japanese struggle to end their special status, impacted on many aspects of modern Japan beyond their primary role as trading stations.