"This is the true story of an extraordinary love affair that began when a young British Army officer fell for a Japanese woman in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1904, Arthur Hart-Synnot was sent to Japan to learn the language of his country's new ally. At least five generations of the Hart family had served in the British Army, and the ambitious young officer expected to keep up the tradition. Arriving in Tokyo on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, Arthur met Masa Suzuki at the Officers' Club and was immediately smitten. Masa had grown up among shopkeepers and craftsmen in the working-class section of Tokyo. She had left school at age fourteen to work in a shop and was a dutiful Japanese daughter when helping her mother serve meals, she would kneel at a respectful distance while her father and brothers ate. But her feelings for Arthur were so powerful that she was willing to risk her family's disapproval to be with him." "Sword and Blossom follows Arthur and Masa's attempts to make a life together and chronicles the racial prejudice and social snobbery they encountered. Separated for years at a time, they stayed in touch through long, deeply affectionate letters that they wrote to each other in Japanese. The authors use this treasure trove of more than eight hundred letters to describe an extraordinary story of enduring love and great loss."--BOOK JACKET.

Peter Pagnamenta is a writer and documentary maker. He first went to Japan in 1975 and has been returning ever since to make programs for British television. He produced and wrote the eight-hour series Nippon, an archive and testimony history of Japan since 1945. Major historical programs for the BBC include the award-winning People's Century, a twenty-six-part television history of the twentieth century coproduced with WGBH Boston for which he was the BBC executive producer and scriptwriter. He was also editor of the British current affairs series Panorama.