Dr Chris Harding

For this amount of money, you can have a piece of armor.

For more money, we'll actually give you samurai status.

So it's sad.

And I think ordinary Japanese townspeople have quite a low view of them by this point.

They see them as...

People who tell big stories about samurai derring-do, but they'd be useless in a real battle because they've never fought one.

They just go shopping.

They write bad poetry.

They visit geisha.

They're not really contributing anything.

And yet ordinary people are paying their stipends.

So I think there's an awful lot of anger there amongst ordinary people and also amongst young samurai.

So these young samurai, by the time Matthew Perry arrives, and in the few months after he goes and the shogun is trying to work out what to do, they see the shogun at dithering.

And if you think the word shogun comes from a longer word, which means, what does it mean?

It means barbarian crushing generalissimo.

So it's a case of you had one job.

Exactly.

And so the Americans, they seem to, not only do they dither, they then seek the opinion of other feudal lords around Japan.

And again, if you're trying to promote yourselves as being the sort of wise strategists whose job it is to look after Japan's security, to kind of seek advice, to farm out what you might do next.

Again, it makes you look stupid.