Rosina Buckland is Asahi Shimbun Curator: Japanese Collections, author of The Splendour of Modernity: Japanese Arts of the Meiji Era (Reaktion Books, 2024) and curator of the exhibition Samurai at the British Museum.

Oleg Benesch is Head of Department and Professor of Modern History at the University of York and co-author of Japan's Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace (CUP, 2019).