The Nippon Maru put in to Kobe harbour one cold January morning and its passengers were greeted with a blast of icy air from the snow-capped mountains that rose up sharply behind the town. Emma shifted her gaze from those towering peaks to the foreground, taking in the long row of staunch-looking colonial buildings that spoke of European wealth. Ignoring the usual bustle on the pier below, she let her attention come to rest on a few fishing boats moored to the west and bobbing lazily. A familiar port smell reached her nose, but there was no undertow of drains and sewage. Kobe, indeed what she had seen of Japan so far – the ship had already put in at Yokohama – seemed to her more sedate and orderly than Singapore, and at once more foreign and strange. Singapore was, after all, a British col
