ABSTRACT
M O S T E A R L Y Japanese travellers in Britain believed they were there to investigate. They had ventured overseas to explore the West, and although they were able to draw upon a body of literature in Japanese, Chinese and Dutch, the shadowy images which these still portrayed served only to emphasize the urgency of their task. The first studies abroad, or tansaku reports as they were often described, were thus rooted in the tradition of research on Russia and Britain that had emerged in the late Edo period, given impetus by the appearance of foreign ships off the Japanese coast, and accelerated by the heightened sense of alarm in the wake of the Opium War. Within the space of just a few years, the energy unleashed by this desire to fathom the mysteries of the outside world had produced an impressive volume of research, particularly intensive in its treatment of Britain.
