text: Diplomacy Entering the Foreign Office in 1858, Mitford was appointed Third Secretary of the British Embassy at Saint Petersburg. After service in the Diplomatic Corps in Shanghai, he went to Japan in 1866 as second secretary to the British Legation at the time of the migration of the Japanese seat of power from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo), known as the "Meiji Restoration". There he met Ernest Satow whom he travelled with across the hinterland of Japan. He later wrote Tales of Old Japan (1871), a book credited with making such Japanese Classics as "The Forty-seven Ronin" first known to a wide Western public. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1873.
  Following the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, in 1906 Mitford accompanied Prince Arthur on a visit to Japan to present the Emperor Meiji with the Order of the Garter. He was asked by courtiers there about Japanese ceremonies that had disappeared since 1868.
  Public life
  From 1874 to 1886, Mitford acted as secretary to HM Office of Works, involved in the lengthy restoration of the Tower of London and in landscaping parts of Hyde Park such as "The Dell". From 1887, he was a member of the Royal Commission on Civil Services. He also sat as Member of Parliament for Stratford-on-Avon between 1892 and 1895.
  According to W. S. Gilbert, Mitford served as a consultant on Japanese culture to Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan during the development of their 1885 Savoy Opera The Mikado. A traditional Japanese song hummed by Mitford to Gilbert and Sullivan during a rehearsal was used in the opera for the march accompanying the Mikado's entrance.