Christopher Roberts has written a valuable account of the development of the British courts for Japan during the four decades that British nationals in Japan remained subject to consular jurisdiction. This is an excellent institutional history, and Roberts grounds his analysis in a thorough examination of the British Foreign Office archives and contemporary news reports. Chapter 1 covers all parts of the court system, from the early creation of multiple consular courts in the treaty ports to their elaboration with both the Supreme Court for China and Japan in 1865 and Her Britannic Majesty's Court for Japan in 1879. Chapter 2 reviews the personnel of the court system, from judges and advocates to consuls, interpreters, and clerks. In Chapters 3–6, Roberts systematically presents the work of the courts, from criminal jurisdiction on land and sea to civil cases and appeals. This meticulous analysis of the day-to-day workings of the court system will become a standard reference work for scholars of Japanese history who are interested in the British courts during the Meiji period. It will be profitably read alongside much older works—Francis Taylor Piggott, Exterterritoriality: The Law Relating to Consular Jurisdiction and to Residence in Oriental Countries (1892); William Edward Hall, A Treatise on the Foreign Powers and Jurisdiction of the British Crown (1894); and W. Ross Johnston, Sovereignty and Protection: A Study of British Jurisdictional Imperialism in the Late Nineteenth Century (1973).

The problem with the book is that its close focus on the British courts isolates it from the history of Japan's international relations, legal relations, and diplomacy. It is far too narrowly construed. Because the footnotes refer primarily to documents in the Foreign Office archives, Roberts gives the false impression that he is the only scholar to have discussed this history. The reader whose curiosity is piqued, for example, by mentions of the Hiogo Treasure case or the Maria Luz incident, must find further reading independently. Hence, the thorough discussion in Chapter 7 of the court cases resulting from the collision between the Chishima and the SS Ravenna in 1892 is a welcome anomaly, particularly for its breadth in taking the reader from the consular court to an appeal in the Supreme Court for China and Japan, and then to a second appeal before the Privy Council. Roberts' detailed reading of the case substantiates his important point that authorities in London looked to a Treaty's exact terms, whereas personnel in Japan tended to advocate what they wished the Treaty to read.

Similarly, because the book does not engage Japanese scholarship on extraterritoriality or British courts, Roberts' observations are occasionally naive (xxviii, 111). In reviewing treaty revision negotiations in Chapter 8, for example, Roberts states that “The history of these Conferences, and Britain's role in them, is worthy of a study in terms of changing international relations, diplomatic manoeuvrings and intrigue and also domestic Japanese politics . . .” (322) and gives no thought to the volumes that Japanese historians have written on these topics. Moreover, as a result of both the narrow focus on British courts and this non-consideration of Japanese scholarship, the book's thesis is rather underwhelming. It may well be that Roberts, like Richard T. Chang in The Justice of the Western Consular Courts in Nineteenth Century Japan (1984), demonstrates that the British courts in Japan did not exhibit “consistent patterns which would prove an institutional bias” against Japanese plaintiffs (345), but how significant is this thesis? In the face of repeated insults from British Minister Harry Parkes during his tenure, the arrogance of British subjects who insisted that they were under no obligation to obey Japanese laws, and the many cases that were settled out of court, the impartiality of British courts toward those Japanese plaintiffs under conditions of extraterritoriality is small consolation, particularly when Roberts undermines his generalizations regarding impartiality. He admits, for example, that “there are suggestions that individual Britons may have sought to shelter behind the Courts to avoid legitimate liabilities to ‘smaller’ Japanese traders and individuals,” but such actions “tended not to happen with larger Japanese businesses” (345). At points where Roberts finds examples of bias against Japanese, he dismisses the existence of a pattern, because the numbers do not yield a meaningful quantity, or he downplays as exceptional one or another shocking case (113f., 127, 214–16, 218f., 269, 346). Therefore, it is small wonder that the Japanese grew hostile to extraterritoriality (115, 310).

These criticisms are not meant to diminish the value of Roberts' contribution to our understanding of British courts in Japan, but to voice regret that some larger context of Japanese history or British colonial jurisdiction had not provided a more compelling grounding for his informative account.