 Bakunin stopped over briefly in Japan as part of a hurried flight from 12 years of imprisonment, a marked man racing across the world to his European home; he had neither Japanese contacts nor any facility in the Japanese language; the small number of expatriate newspapers by Europeans published in China and Japan provided no insights into local revolutionary conditions or possibilities.Besides, Bakunin's conversion to anarchism came in 1865, towards the end of his life, and four years after his time in Japan.English translations of Bakunin's texts are rare compared to the comprehensive editions in French (by Arthur Lehning), Spanish and German.