Japan in the Eyes of the West
While the Iwakura Mission made a significant impression on the people of the countries it visited, westerners perceived Japan and the Japanese very differently when in the country itself. Although Japan made significant efforts to modernize and appear more Western, when travelers arrived they saw Japan not in those endeavors but in the Japan the Japanese were trying to abandon. Basil Hall Chamberlain related the clash between these two perspectives in one specific incident where one Sir Edwin Arnold, upon visiting Tokyo and receiving Japanese hospitality, “lauded Japan to the skies – and lauded it justly – as the nearest earthly approach to Paradise or to Lotus-land…Now, do you think that the Japanese were satisfied with this meed [sic] of praise? Not a bit of it…Art forsooth, scenery, sweetness of disposition! cries this editor. Why did not Sir Edwin praise us for huge industrial enterprises, for commercial talent, for wealth, political sagacity, powerful armaments?”[1] Even though Arnold was praising Japan and its virtues, the Japanese were upset because he focused not on the aspects of their country they worked to improve but on the scenery and the foliage, the parts of Japan they themselves were not emphasizing. Even when travelers considered the modern parts of Japan, they were far from flattering descriptions: “Suddenly we crossed a muddy creek by a hideous iron bridge; and where were Europe and America then? Surely that dirty canal must be wider than the great Pacific, for at the hotel one was still in America, but crossing it one was unmistakably in Japan.”[2] This description of Yokohama by a British traveler shows the same perspective that Sir Edwin Arnold espoused: the real Japan was not the modern imitations that were being implemented, but the aspects of Japan present before this drive to urbanize and westernize that arose after the Restoration. This image helps illustrate what Japan was to the West when they visited: rather than an iron bridge or a dirty canal, this photograph of Shinji Pond at Kameido Tenjin Shrine in Tokyo is about as far from a Western scene as Japan could show. The architecture, particularly the high-arching wooden bridge in the center and the building on the right, are constructs of wood, with wisteria blossoms adorning the overhang. The pond is clear rather than muddy, and even the people on the bridge and the man on the left side are all dressed in traditional Japanese attire as opposed to the Western clothing seen in the photographs of the Iwakura Mission. Despite the utmost efforts of the Japanese, this was the image of Japan that travelers took away when they left the country: the idyllic, “earthly approach to Paradise” described by Sir Edwin Arnold, not the modernized form of Japan they tried to create.