Lecture: In the Tracks of the Iwakura Embassy: The U.S. and Japan in 1872

November 3

Lecture: In the Tracks of the Iwakura Embassy: The U.S. and Japan in 1872
Prof. Martin Collcutt (Chair, East Asian Department, Princeton University) and Mrs. Akiko Collcutt
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 – 8:00 PM
In 1871-73, Japanese Minister of State Iwakura Tomomi led an official mission of forty-eight government leaders and bureaucrats and fifty-four students to the United States and Europe, with the purpose of studying Western institutions and lifestyles. The undertaking had a major effect on how newly modernizing Japan came to view the West and its own role in international affairs. Two years ago, historian Martin Collcutt and his wife Akiko Collcutt accompanied a group of Japanese historians in precisely retracing the Iwakura Mission’s progress across the American continent. They visited all major cities and small towns where the Japanese embassy had stopped, investigated local historical societies and newspapers, collecting documentary materials and personal recollections of the experience of America by the early-Meiji travelers. Illustrated by slides and other materials, Prof. and Mrs. Collcutt will describe their own journey of discovery.
Co-sponsored by the East Asian Institute