The Iwakura Mission or Iwakura Embassy (岩倉使節団, Iwakura Shisetsudan) was a Japanese diplomatic journey around the world, initiated in 1871 by the oligarchs of the Meiji period. Although it was not the only such "mission", it is the most well-known and possibly most important for the modernization of Japan after a long period of isolation from the West. It was first proposed by the influential Dutch missionary and engineer Guido Verbeck and was probably based on the model of the Grand Embassy of Peter I.
The Iwakura mission followed several such missions previously sent by the Shogunate, such as the Japanese Embassy to the United States (1860), the First Japanese Embassy to Europe (1862), and the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe (1863).
Read more about Iwakura Mission: Composition, Itinerary, Purpose and Results
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“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)