ABSTRACT

THERE WAS NO QUESTION but that the delegates led by Prince Iwakura Tomomi should find time to visit the Russian Empire.1 Russia was a large country with a population estimated at 72 million (1857) and one with a frontier on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. She was a country with which Japan had many points of tension, mainly frontier disputes and territorial anxieties. On the other hand, the Japanese were not greatly interested in imitating Russia or her institutions. Indeed they had already received rather caustic comments from European statesmen about them. But a visit was nonetheless indispensable. Russia had been on the itinerary of the Bakufu mission to Europe in 1862; and there had been a frequent exchange of missions. Japanese students were attending college there. So Russia was being studied like other European countries, though not on the same scale.