ABSTRACT
BARELY THREE YEARS after the Restoration in 1868, a group of high-ranking government officials and diplomats, the Iwakura mission, visited the United States. The mission, led by one of the prominent aristocrats in the Restoration, Iwakura Tomomi, was arguably Japan’s first attempt at top-level and fullscale diplomacy. The itinerary of the mission was to take in not only the major Western powers with a significant naval presence in the Pacific and Asia, America, England, France and Holland, but also quite an extraordinary array of other major and minor powers including Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, and, of course, Russia. In terms of the proportion of time spent in these countries respectively, America and Britain received by far the greater portion with just over six months in America and four months in Britain; practically half of the entire time spent abroad. Next was France with just over three months, Germany and Switzerland with approximately four weeks each, Italy with three and the remaining states, including Russia, being given itineraries lasting approximately two weeks at most. A notable exception among the minor powers was, of course, Switzerland where the mission relaxed at leisure as it had earlier done in Scotland.1
