Commodore Perry's forcible opening of Japan to the outside world in 1853-54 is not only of major historical importance but in the right hands would also be a fascinating story. Sadly this book is a great opportunity missed, with poor prose and poor selection and arrangement of material leading to a frustrating reading experience. There is some recovery in the last couple of chapters, with a thoughtful discussion of the ethics and legacy of the Perry mission following the inferior telling of the history, but oh what might have been!

The irritations start early and come at some pace. There are flat-out errors, such as "prototypes" for "protocols", and a bizarre map of the US in 1853 showing an independent Texas and the modern US Southwest as Mexican when this territory had all joined the Union in the 1840s. Then there are the numerous awkward sentences that obfuscate meaning, plus many unsupported points. As an example: "...along the four-hundred-odd miles of the Tokaido, the state-of-the-art highway between Edo and the ancient capital of Kyoto..." It seems inappropriate to use "state-of-the-art", a very modern term, to describe 19th century technology. And is the author saying that this was the most advanced road-building technology in Japan - in which case since the Tokaido was by several orders of magnitude the most important Japanese road this would be completely unsurprising - or the most advanced in the world, which would be a very interesting point but would require explanation? Alas, we shall never know. 

There are also major structural flaws, with descriptions of the two protagonists, Perry and the leading Japanese official Abe, drip fed across many chapters so that a full feeling for these characters is only achieved if at all once well into the second half of the book. The discussion of the US motives for the mission is also drip fed and never really dealt with satisfactorily. But the decision to cover all four of Perry's visits to Okinawa in one chapter is perhaps the most disastrous, stripping the book of any narrative flow and denying the reader the ability to take the journey with Perry and his crewmen. 

Only in the final two chapters does George Feifer hit his stride, with an original critique of the manner in which Perry carried out his task and of the impact the Black Ships had on Japan's political development. There is a great book to be written about the clash of cultures and great figures that took place in what is now Tokyo Bay in 1853-54, but this is not it.

Surely there can be no more burning issue in the world today than how one’s bookshelves should be organised? OK, OK, I know there are some who think this of trivial import or have perhaps never given the subject any thought, but these people are no doubt only a tiny minority who can safely be ignored. As the rest of us know well, the arrangement of your bookshelves is a crucial test of intellect and character, and like chess or the enduring popularity of Abba it has no definitive answer.

Broad principles are easy enough to decide: fiction separate from non-fiction and alphabetised by author; non-fiction broken into a handful of categories. But then come the hard questions. Japanese fiction in the fiction or the Japan section? (Fiction for the moment). Hardbacks and paperbacks mixed together? (Yes for fiction, since not many hardbacks; no for politics/history/biography where hardbacks predominate). And there will always be anomalies that will plague your mind as you lie in bed: “Should I really put the two paperback volumes of the Teddy Roosevelt biography with the hardback one?” It’s a wonder I sleep at all.

Tiny minority they may be, but I am on friendly terms with several people who otherwise show all the signs of being decent, intelligent human beings but have no system at all for filing their books, other than to toss them up there in vaguely the order they were bought or read, perhaps adjusting slightly for size. Yes, my perseverance with such friendships does indeed demonstrate my generosity of spirit. 

These people no doubt do something similar with their e-books, but those at least are out of sight. For the rest of us, Kindles merely remove from public view the chosen solution but make the choice little easier. Yet while e-books do not help with the question of where to file finished reading material, it seems to me that perhaps their greatest merit – greater even than convenience or cost – is that they prevent that most heinous of crimes: the sorting of books by colour. 

There have been a few recent stories about the use by certain authors of “sock puppets” – online identities created for the purpose of deception. This deceit usually involves writing glowing reviews of your own work from fictitious “readers”, but in some cases also involves the anonymous trashing of the work of rivals. Paying for reviews, while not strictly sock puppetry, often also gets rolled in as part of the same problem.

There is no evidence that these furry creatures have over-run the online environment, and as far as is known most Amazon reviews are by unpaid genuine readers. But to the extent that it weakens confidence in the online reviewing process it damages all writers and hence in my opinion a good dose of myxomatosis is warranted. In fact, one group of writers has begun just such an eradication campaign, stating that they “unreservedly condemn this behaviour, and commit never to use such tactics.” Please consider me equally committed.

There does seem to me a hierarchy within sock puppetry: paying for reviews is cheating; writing them yourself is worse; slagging off a rival from behind a pseudonym is the most deplorable of all. The easy test with this, as with most forms of behavior, is “would you be comfortable telling your friends and family you had done it?” I think not, and if you feel the need to keep it secret then it can’t be acceptable. Everything else is sophistry. 

One of the best-selling self-published authors, John Locke, now admits to having purchased reviews early on in his career, but this admission has come only once he had acquired the protection of a best-seller reputation. I bet he wasn’t bragging about it down the pub in the days when he was happy to sell in double figures for the week. (He’s also a writer who claims he no longer reads books – too busy writing it seems – so perhaps no great weight should be attached to his opinions.)

No one is saying writers have to be paragons of virtue. Thank goodness. But in the week when Lance Armstrong’s contempt for his own sport and its fans was finally exposed, it should be possible for writers to respect the trade they themselves have gotten into.

The Yokohama History Museum recently held an exhibition on the “Namamugi Incident”, in which the British merchant Charles Richardson was murdered in 1862 just outside the village of Namamugi, near Yokohama, by samurai of the Satsuma clan. It is a well-known historical event in Japan as it led to the Anglo-Satsuma conflict of the following year, during which the Royal Navy burned down most of the Satsuma capital Kagoshima in southern Kyushu. 

The Namamugi Incident is less well known in the West, but I am hoping all that will change as it features prominently in my novel “Milligan and the Samurai Rebels”, available now from all good online bookshops (as long they are called Amazon). The established history - which does not record Milligan’s presence at Namamugi nor his poor horsemanship that brought about the whole murderous exchange - is that Richardson and three others from the Foreign Settlement at Yokohama went for a ride in the surrounding countryside and at Namamugi on the great East-Wast highway, the Tokaido, they encountered the party accompanying a Satsuma lord on his way back from Edo (as Tokyo was then known). Japanese practice in such a circumstance was to dismount, kneel and lower one’s forehead to the floor until the lord had passed. Aware of this expectation but unwilling to fulfill it, the Westerners were attacked by samurai retainers and Richardson was killed. His body, when later discovered, was horribly mutilated with dozens of sword cuts. 

Needless to say the British authorities and the other Westerners were less than amused, and a few months later a punitive mission to Satsuma was undertaken by British forces. Ironically, this conflict brought Britain and Satsuma closer together, with the former becoming the latter’s main source of modern arms; weapons which were ultimately used to topple the Tokugawa Shogunate and usher in Imperial rule and modern Japan in 1868. You might therefore say that the main loser that day at Namamugi was the Shogun, after poor Richardson himself of course.

The Yokohama exhibition itself consists mostly of documents from the time, with the odd period photograph thrown in. Not wildly exciting for the casual tourist, and with no English explanations you have to read Japanese to get anything from it. I liked the  description of the incident as “a result of a number of cultural misunderstandings”. 

Well, perhaps. Westerners’ cultural misunderstandings in Japan, such as not taking your shoes off when entering a house, tend to cause only minor offence. They don’t usually lead to bloody murder, but then times have changed and I guess we should be thankful for that.