Japan in the West
Despite the official rejection of treaty revision by the Western powers, the people of those countries, particularly the United States, recognized the progress Japan was making, especially since this was one of the rare chances they received a Japanese delegation of such size. In particular, the Iwakura Mission was also one of the first occurrences of Japanese women going abroad to study, with those women shown in the image here: Nagai Shigeko, Ueda Teiko, Yoshimasu Ryoko, Tsuda Umeko, and Yamakawa Sutematsu. When the Embassy arrived in San Francisco, many Americans were surprised to see that these women had accompanied the delegation. They also approved of their plans for education as a sign of social change, particularly considering how little social status women had less than a decade ago: “This is an astonishing step forward, and has been taken with a due regard to all the difficulties it involves. It is the commencement of a movement fraught with vast consequences to the country, and of course, great circumspection will be used. If the education sought and obtained is of a solid kind, this step may lead to a change in the social condition of the women in Japan, which will have more to do with its advance in civilization than almost any other that could be named.”[1] Another article shows how impressed the Americans are at the speed with which Japan is moving forward just by sending the Embassy abroad: “Here is social and political progress, surely, for it was not long since that Japan forbade its nobles from going abroad, and women were not thought worth educating.”[2] In this way, the Iwakura Mission was doing well in its objective to raise Japan’s position in the eyes of westerners. This picture exemplifies their endeavors to do so: the women, even young Tsuda Umeko, who is only 8 at the time, are all dressed in Western women’s attire, ready to embrace the Western education they came to the United States to receive. Thus, while in the Western governments refused to acknowledge Japan’s regime as equal so soon after the Restoration, the American people praised the modernity and progress the Japanese endeavored to express when they traveled to the West.