Just occasionally, a book comes along that changes one's whole perspective on a subject that seemed very clear and settled. Michael Auslin's study of Japanese diplomacy from the arrival of Commodore Perry in Tokyo (then Edo) Bay in 1853 until the successful renegotiation of the treaties in from 1894 onwards is just such a work. Auslin argues that, contrary to the general picture painted by others (including me), the Bakufu, the effective rulers of Japan when Perry arrived, were not passive actors in the face of this threat from outside. He also questions how far developments in China influenced the course of events in Japan, pointing out that the way the treaty system developed in Japan proved to be very different from what had happened in China. Admittedly, once or twice imperialism showed its iron fist, but on the whole Japan escaped the imposition of a regime of control that favoured foreigners. The round of treaty making that really began with Townsend Harris's treaty of 29 July 1858 – the earlier American and British naval treaties having been found wanting when their august negotiators got home – saw Japan emerge in a much better condition than China. Japan was not semi-independent, as China seemed to many. Foreigners remained under tight control, with limited access to the interior of the country. There was no Japanese Imperial Maritime Customs, under foreign control and largely staffed by foreigners as was the case in China. None of Japan's treaty ports were able to achieve the quasi-independence that marked Shanghai from the 1850s to 1941. In Japan's most important treaty port, Yokohama, the foreigners effectively abandoned any real attempt at self-government as early as 1867, were never able to claim it back. The British and the French maintained small garrisons at Yokohama into the 1870s, but there was nothing ever in Japan to compare to the Beijing Legation Quarter, which from 1900 until 1941 had permanent garrisons and where Chinese law effectively did not run. Other Chinese cities had foreign garrisons and a permanent foreign naval presence. Japan escaped all this, Auslin argues, because its negotiators had very clear ideas from the beginning. They were also adept at playing one foreign barbarian off against another, for they quickly realised that the Western powers were not united in their approach, however much they might appear so at first sight.