ABSTRACT
THE IWAKURA MISSION arrived in Liverpool on board the Cunard steamer Olympus on 17 August 1872. It stayed in Britain for a total of 122 days, leaving London for Paris on 16 December. This mission was the most important and largest of all the Japanese missions sent to Westem countries between the end of the Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji era, that is, between 1860 and 1873. It was the first official diplomatic mission abroad since the Meiji Restoration, the first Japanese mission designed according to Western diplomatic principles, and perhaps the first overseas mission in world history to include such a large proportion of a country’s leadership.1
