The Second Japanese Embassy to Europe ( ja, 第２回遣欧使節, also ), also called the Ikeda Mission, was sent on February 6, 1864 by the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

. The head of the mission was

Ikeda Nagaoki , formally "Ikeda Chikugo no kami Nagaoki", was the governor of small villages of Ibara, Bitchū Province (Okayama Prefecture), Japan, during the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. He was, at 27, the head of the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe ...

, governor of small villages of

Ibara is a Cities of Japan, city located in Okayama Prefecture, Japan. The city was founded on March 30, 1953. , the city has an estimated population of 41,460 and a population density of 170 people per km². The total area is . Mergers On March ...

Bitchū Province was a province of Japan on the Inland Sea side of western Honshū, in what is today western Okayama Prefecture. It was sometimes called , with Bizen and Bingo Provinces; those three provinces were settled in the late 7th Century, dividing fo ...

( Okayama Prefecture). The assistant head of the mission was

Kawazu Sukekuni Kawazu may refer to: Places *Kawazu, Shizuoka 270px, Kawazu Town Hall 270px, Kawazu sakura is a town located on the east coast of Izu Peninsula in Kamo District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 7,20 ...

. It followed the so-called First Japanese Embassy to Europe (1862), even though the Tensho Embassy (1582–1590) and the expedition led by

Hasekura Tsunenaga was a kirishitan Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyō of Sendai. He was of Japanese imperial descent with ancestral ties to Emperor Kanmu. Other names include Philip Francis Faxicura, Felipe Francisco Faxicura, and Phi ...

(between 1613 and 1620) had previously reached Europe centuries earlier. The objective of the mission was to obtain French agreement to the closure of the harbour of

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

to foreign trade. The mission was sent following the 1863 " Order to expel barbarians" () enacted by

Emperor Kōmei was the 121st Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'')孝明天皇 (121)/ref> Kōmei's reign spanned the years from 1846 through 1867, corresponding to the final years of the ...

, and the

Bombardment of Shimonoseki The refers to a series of military engagements in 1863 and 1864, fought to control the Shimonoseki Straits of Japan by joint naval forces from Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, against the Japanese feudal domain of ...

incidents, in a wish to close again the country to Western influence, and return to sakoku status. The task proved impossible, as Yokohama was the center of foreign presence in Japan since the opening of the country by Commodore Perry in 1854. On the way to France, the mission visited Egypt, where the members of the mission were photographed posing before the

Sphinx A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon. In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...

by Antonio Beato, brother of the photographer

Felice Beato Felice Beato (1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, ...

. The members of the mission were abundantly photographed in Paris by Nadar. The mission returned to Japan in failure, on August 23, 1864.

References

*Bennet, Terry: ''Early Japanese Images''. Tuttle Publishing, 1998. (ISBN ) {{ISBN, 978-0-8048-2033-2 (ISBN )

External links

The Second Embassy
(Japanese) Foreign relations of the Tokugawa shogunate Meiji Restoration 1864 in Japan Japanese embassies to the West 1864 in France

See also

References

External links