Milligan and the Samurai Rebels

"Milligan and the Samurai Rebels" is a humorous, historical novel set in the Japan of the 1860s. The Shogun has been forced by the threat of Western firepower to re-open Japan to the outside world, while samurai outraged at this decision are scheming to topple the Shogunate and re-establish Imperial rule. In parallel, Britain and France are struggling by every means except open warfare to establish themselves as the leading influence on the government of Japan and to secure the accompanying trading privileges. Into this maelstrom steps Robert Seamus Milligan, a young British diplomat with a weakness for women and drink, who has joined the diplomatic service only to escape a contretemps back home. Upon his arrival in Japan and entirely against his will he is immediately plunged into the clash between Japan and the West, between the Shogunate and Imperial forces, and between Britain and France. Milligan takes part in several real historical events: the murder of a British merchant by the forces of the province of Satsuma; the Anglo-Satsuma war that follows (on the Satsuma side); the “Forbidden Gate Incident”, in which Satsuma and the Shogunate successfully defend the Imperial Palace in Kyoto from the armies of the province of Choshu; and the war between the allied Western powers and Choshu (this time on the Western side). He survives all this - plus a Royal Navy Commodore on the warpath, humiliation at the hands of a French spy, sex in the bath with a female Japanese aristocrat, life as a Satsuma samurai, and a sumo bout against a homicidal maniac – thanks on more than one occasion to his Japanese servant, Miyazawa, and with much more credit than he deserves.