ABSTRACT
Shortly after midday on 30 April 1862, a ship approached the English coast, and as the white cliffs of Dover appeared, the passengers on board set eyes upon an unexplored land. This was the Takenouchi mission, the first bakufu delegation to be sent to Europe. To their knowledge, no one from Japan had ever set foot on this most distant island in the West, with the possible exception of Otokichi, the castaway they had discovered some weeks before in Singapore. They knew full well the significance of their journey, but few at the time could have suspected just how rapidly Japanese investigations of the outside world were to gather momentum in the years ahead.
