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I will be talking about this book at the thread above
Huffman, James L. "A Yankee in Meiji Japan"
New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
isbn 0742526216
Edward House, journalist, was connected to THE TOKIO TIMES English
language paper....he was also REAL CLOSE buddies with MARK TWAIN, WALT
WHITMAN and ARTEMUS WARD. He also knew Ulysses S. Grant (who visited
Japan), John Russell Young, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Okuma Shigenobu
and Inoue Kaoru.
He was sooo close to Mark Twain that he brought his lady friend Aoki
Koto on a visit to the States. The couple stayed with the Twains in
Hartford.
The reason why I'm so enthusiastic about English language papers,
preferably printed in Japan, which covered either Boshin or Seinan War
is because we can immediately see what kind of news the foriegners got
and their opinions on the situation---and it's in ENGLISH (^_^)
I should be getting a compilation of the TOKIO TIMES via inter-library
loan. Tokio Times was printed between 1877-1880. even though it
doesn't cover the Boshin War directly...there should be references to it.
If anyone has info on English language papers printed in Japan please
let me know. I had NO luck finding the paper printed in Yokohoma.
I have now read in 3 different places that during the early to late
Meiji era people actually COLLECTED newspaper clippings. Taka,
Princess Chichibu's nanny collected related articles concerning the
wedding but that made perfect sense. People preferred to collect the
newspapers printed in "color" which illustrates scenes from the Seinan
War (usually exaggerated romantic accounts). The prints I shared with
here in the form of zip files a while back had colorful paintings
depicting the Seinan War---I presume that those same paintings/prints
were the ones the newspapers printed.