During their three years aboard HMS Bacchante, Dalton encouraged Prince Albert Victor and Prince George to keep journals ‘written up every evening before turning in, both at sea and ashore’. These diaries purportedly formed the basis of the published accounts of the voyage, which appeared in 1886. Despite Dalton’s assertion in the introduction that the words in the two volumes were entirely the princes’ own, the long passages alluding to classical literature and excerpts from history imply that Dalton heavily edited the work. Both volumes contain several illustrations and plates, such as this of Mount Fuji, after photographs collected throughout the voyage.

Like much travel literature of the period, the narrative of the princes’ time in Japan combines anecdotes of ‘exotic’ customs with comparisons to familiar British scenes, presenting a romantic, yet instantly recognisable, version of the country to the reading public. On a hill outside Tokyo, for instance, the princes sit in tea-sheds admiring the ‘magnificent view’ and drinking cherry blossom tea from small cups without handles. The landscape, however, ‘is most carefully cultivated, just like a garden in England’. Later, when visiting the temples at Nara, the gardens remind them ‘of the quieter corners of Greenwich Park’ – yet the deer found here are sacred, ‘fed from the hand with rice balls’ and are said to be descended ‘from one of the old Shinto gods’.

Text adapted from Japan: Courts and Culture (2020)