The Iwakura Mission to America and Europe - A New Assessment (Paperback)

Driven by two imperatives - the need to identify, classify and assess Western technology and culture, as well as advance a dialogue for reviewing the so-called "unequal treaties", the new Meiji government of 1868 dispatched a top-level ministerial team to the West, arriving first in the United States in January 1872. In all, the mission spent 205 days in America, followed by 122 days in Britain and two months in France, including visits to Belgium, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Italy. The sheer scale of the mission's "vision", and logistics was remarkable, even more so, however, was the Japanese government's decision to allow so many of its top people to be away together for such an extended period of time. The findings of the mission were to have enormous significance regarding the future direction of the new state of Japan. Drawing on the papers given at the triennial conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies in 1997 (which coincided with the 125th anniversary of the Iwakura mission), this overview of the mission's goal and achievements separately assesses the content and impact of the visit to each country.