ABSTRACT

THE RETURN of Iwakura’s missionin 1873 from its two-year journey to Europe and the United States marked the dawn of a new era in Japan. The mission’s report laid emphasis on the backwardness of Japan and its need to learn from the West, and the intention was to obtain this new information by inviting Western experts to Japan and by sending Japanese students to Europe and the United States. It was also possible for Japanese to observe Western culture and social models and practises on their home territory, however, as, from 1859 onwards, Westerners had been allowed to settle in certain ‘treaty ports’, of which Yokohama had rapidly become the most significant.