Cargill Knott (1856-1922) was among a number of foreign specialists invited to Japan by the Meiji Government. During his time in the country, he conducted extensive research in the field of seismology, undertaking a magnetic survey of Japan.

This portrait considers how Kikuchi Dairoku's (1855-1917) exposure to England and his education there meant that his own career anticipated the development of Japan at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.