Iwakura Mission

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Iwakura Mission ( Japanese 岩 倉 使節 団 Iwakura shisetsudan ) is the name of a trip from 1871 to 1873 by a group led by Iwakura Tomomi made up of high-ranking Japanese politicians and scholars and students to North America and Europe .

In the last years of the shogunate , various unequal treaties were forced upon the Japanese state by the USA , Great Britain and other European states. As the revision of these treaties was pending, the new government now intended to terminate these treaties through diplomatic means. Another goal of this trip was the exploration of the European states, their form of government , politics, society, economy and technology. The knowledge gained on this mission played a decisive role in the development of the modern Japanese state.

The Dutch missionary Guido Verbeck was an important initiator .

Travel background

After several trips under the shogunate (The Takenouchi Mission 1862 and others), the new government decided after the abolition of the shogunate in 1868 to introduce itself abroad, to negotiate the unequal treaties and to get a picture of the western world procure. Prince Iwakura Tomomi was entrusted with the management ; his four deputies were important members of the new government. The high-ranking delegation member Itō Hirobumi had already been to Europe as a student in 1863. The aim of the trip was to expand the knowledge gained from previous stays. The European missionaries based in Japan also supported the trip, in particular the Dutch missionary Guido Verbeck in 1869 , who advised the Ministry of Culture and worked at various schools. Verbeck played a key role in planning the travel stations together with the Ministry of Education official Tanaka Fujimaro .

Members of the Legation

The senior members of the Iwakura mission, in the middle is Iwakura Tomomi, behind from left to right: Kido, Yamaguchi, Itō and Ōkubo. The photo was taken in 1872 while in London.

In addition to important politicians, a number of scholars and servants were also taken away. The total number of participants in the Iwakura mission was 48 people. 60 students traveled with the embassy, ​​some of whom were left behind in the countries visited to take part in courses and training courses in the foreign countries. Five young women remained in the United States.

course

At the end of December 1871 the embassy left the capital Tokyo. First stop was San Francisco . The mission crossed the USA with the transcontinental railroad in order to secure diplomatic talks in the capital Washington with the aim of revising the unequal treaties concluded with the Togukawa shogunate. In the talks with the US Secretary of State Hamilton Fish , the mission wanted to win the US over for a Japan conference with other western states. Fish himself tried to secure exclusivity in diplomatic and economic relations for his country. Despite initially conciliatory signals from both sides, the negotiations remained fruitless. In the face of the failed negotiations, the Japanese mission and the government that remained in Japan lost faith in the possibility of diplomatic success. The mission itself now primarily pursued the purpose of observing the developed Western countries in order to support the reform course in Japan. The Iwakura delegation toured the Springfield Works on June 20, 1872 . Furthermore, the Japanese were shown how the Gatling machine gun works . The Japanese left the USA from Washington, DC and headed for England by ship .

From August 17, 1872, the Legation spent a total of 122 days in Great Britain. This was the longest stay the Japanese had in a European country on their world tour. They made trips to the Midlands , Northern England and Scotland , but stayed in London more than half the time . At that time there were already over 100 Japanese students in Great Britain, most of whom lived in the London area. They contributed significantly to the fact that the exploratory report prepared by Kume Kunitake for this mission was by far the most extensive Japanese report on Great Britain up to that point. Since this country was the leading economic and political power in the world at that time, this stay had a special influence on the structure of the Japanese state. Intensive economic relations developed between the two countries. Britain's steel industry exported over 1,000 locomotives to Japan between 1871 and 1911, along with a large number of other products . In addition, contracts for the construction of warships for the Japanese Navy were concluded. The withdrawal of the unequal contracts did not succeed, however, this only happened in 1894 with the "Anglo-Japanese Treaty on Trade and Navigation".

On December 16, 1872, the legation left London for Paris . The embassy visited France in January 1873, which was burdened with coming to terms with the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . The Japanese traveled from France via Belgium to the Netherlands . Diplomatic relations with Holland were the only ones that were not severed during the Edo period , although trade remained restricted to the small island of Dejima in the port of Nagasaki.

In March the Japanese visited the German Empire . The Prussian military system, which emerged victorious from the Franco-German War, was to become a model for the development of the Japanese army . The Krupp works in Essen and the Moabit prison in Berlin were visited. Itō Hirobumi was particularly impressed by the authoritarian Prussian form of government, which, as desired in Japan, provided for a strong emperor. From Berlin it went on to Saint Petersburg .

From April 18th to 23rd the group toured Denmark and visited the Danish National Museum . Then she traveled to Sweden for a week.

The journey continued via Munich to Austria-Hungary . The fifth world exhibition , which took place from May 1st to November 2nd, 1873, was visited in Vienna . On June 19, 1873, the Japanese finally traveled from Lindau across Lake Constance to Romanshorn in Switzerland . It was particularly positive that despite the lack of raw materials in the cities, heavy industry was built up.

On July 15, 1873, the delegation finally left Switzerland and returned to Japan. The return journey was through Egypt , Aden , Ceylon , Singapore , Saigon , Hong Kong and Shanghai . The stays in these places, however, were much shorter than those in Europe or America. The Iwakura mission had returned to Japan on September 13, 1873, almost a year later than planned.

Results

The aim of the Iwakura mission to gain new knowledge about the western states was fully achieved. Decisive upheavals in Japan had already taken place before the mission's departure: the dissolution of the shogunate in 1867, the emperor's move to Tokyo in 1868 and the dissolution of the daimyates in 1871.

The goal now was to build a state that was equal to the European powers. About 5,000 foreign consultants ( o-yatoi gaikokujin ) were brought into the country, preferably in the areas in which the respective country was seen as a leader. These helped to build an education system, universities, a health system, the military, the economy and the legal system based on European models. Germans were mainly active in the army and in medicine, the English in the navy and the French in civil law.

However, the second goal of achieving the termination of disadvantageous contracts was not achieved. Although the mission had been extended because of these efforts and the members of the government even exceeded their competences in the negotiations , none of the contracts could be terminated. The extension of the mission earned ambassadors Ōkubo Toshimichi and Kido Takayoshi a lot of criticism after their return. To compensate for this, however, new diplomatic and economic relationships were established that were beneficial for Japan's upswing in the decades that followed.

Historical meaning

The impressions gained on the Iwakura mission as well as the diplomatic and economic relations that arose were decisive for Japan's rapid development into an imperialist great power by the beginning of the 20th century. Particularly noteworthy are the economic influence of Great Britain, as well as the political and military influence of Prussia .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mark Ravina: To Stand with the Nations of the World - Japan's Meiji-Restoration in World History . Oxford, 2017, pp. 143f

literature

  • Kume Kunitake: Tokumei Zenken Taishi Bei-Ō Kairan Jikki ( 特命 全 権 大使 米歐 回 覧 実 記 , German roughly true circular report on the USA / Europe by the authorized special envoy ); trans. by Peter Pantzer : The Iwakura Mission. Kume Kunitake's log book about the visit of the Japanese special embassy to Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 1873 . Iudicium-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89129-746-7
  • The Iwakura Mission to America and Europe: A New Assessment , edited by Ian Nish, published by Routledge / Curzon; 1st edition (October 23, 1998) ISBN 1-873410-84-0

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