ABSTRACT

DURING the four months that the Iwakura mission spent in Britain towards the end of 1872, the ambassador and his entourage were engaged in a busy programme of official engagements. There were factories and museums to visit, banquets to attend and speeches to be made, culminating in an audience with Queen Victoria herself on 5 December. It was on such occasions that Iwakura and his retinue encountered their official hosts in the public eye, and where their visits were most often recorded by the Victorian press. As a result, it was the images that the ‘distinguished guests’ conveyed on these occasions that underpinned British impressions of the Iwakura mission.