To the Shōgun, the mission was an utter failure. To Ikeda, it was an eye-opening journey.
February 6, 1864: Ikeda Mission, also known as the Second Japanese Embassy to Europe, departed Japan in an attempt to persuade the French government to shut down foreign trade, beginning with the port of Yokohama.
Just two years earlier, Japan had sent its First Embassy to Europe to observe Western culture, technology, and diplomacy. That mission was exploratory in nature.
The Ikeda Mission was not. Its purpose was confrontational: to persuade European powers — particularly France — to agree to the closure of Yokohama and scale back foreign trade.
To lead it, the shōgunate selected Ikeda Nagaoki, a capable 27-year-old governor from Ibara in Bitchū Province, today’s Okayama. Young, disciplined, and loyal, Ikeda was entrusted with executing a policy rooted firmly in the past.
Thirty-six men boarded a French warship and began a journey that would take them far beyond anything the shōgunate had anticipated.
Photo by F. Kayser, Courtesy of Geldmuseum
The First Japanese Embassy to Europe, with Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of the most influential thinkers in modern Japan. The mission was sent to observe Western culture.
Ikeda Nagaoki, leader of the Ikeda Mission. In 1864, he was sent abroad as part of the shogunate’s effort to renegotiate Japan’s relationship with foreign powers.
Courtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture
Eight of the thirty-six samurai selected for the Ikeda Mission. Few Japanese had ever traveled this far beyond Asia at the time.
Photo by Antonio Beato
Members of the Ikeda Mission in Egypt, 1864. An improbable image of samurai from Tokugawa Japan before the Sphinx.
Courtesy of Château de Versailles
The Ikeda Mission formally apologized to Emperor Napoleon III following the murder of a French naval officer in Japan.
Samurai Abroad
The route itself was extraordinary. From Japan, the delegation passed through Shanghai, crossed India, transited the newly opened Suez Canal, and arrived in Cairo, where they stood before the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx.
From there, they traveled on to Marseille, then finally to Paris. There, Ikeda and his delegation met Napoleon III. Before negotiations could begin, they were required to issue a formal apology.
In 1863, Lieutenant Henri Camus, a French naval officer, had been murdered in Kanagawa amid growing anti-foreigner sentiment. The incident had inflamed tensions between Japan and the Western powers. In Paris, the Ikeda Mission formally apologized and paid 195,000 francs in compensation to Camus’s family.
Only then did negotiations begin.
The Negotiation of Segregation
France refused to consider closing the port of Yokohama. The city had become a critical hub for trade and diplomacy, and European powers had no intention of retreating from the foothold they had forced open in Japan.
The shōgunate’s attempt to undo globalization by decree proved impossible.
At this point, something remarkable happened. Ikeda himself terminated the talks.
Confronted with the scale of Western industrial power, infrastructure, and global networks, Ikeda recognized a truth the shōgunate was not ready to accept: Japan could not simply turn back the clock.
Ten years earlier, Commodore Perry had forced Japan to open its ports to the West. By 1864, the idea that foreign trade could simply be undone was already unrealistic.
Alexandre Cabanel
Emperor Napoleon III of France, whose government the Ikeda Mission hoped, unsuccessfully, to persuade.
Photo by Antonio Beato
For Ikeda, seeing Western infrastructure, industry, and global networks firsthand forced a reckoning: this was a world Japan could not simply shut out.
Courtesty of Tokugawa Memorial Foundation
Tokugawa Iemochi, shōgun of Japan in 1864, whose government still believed the country could turn back the clock on foreign trade. It wasn't to be.
The Return Home
Impressed by the advancement of French civilization and culture, Ikeda concluded that what Japan needed was not less engagement, but more.
The delegation returned directly to Japan without visiting other European nations, arriving home in the summer of 1864. Ikeda brought back books and materials on physics, biology, industry, textiles, agriculture, brewing, and other subjects — knowledge that would help modernize the country.
On August 23, 1864, the mission officially returned to Japan. They were labeled a failure upon their arrival.
The Shōgunate was not pleased.
Failure, Punishment, and Redemption
Ikeda advocated strongly for opening the country. In response, the shōgunate cut his stipend in half and placed him under confinement.
Three years later, in 1867, on the eve of the Tokugawa regime’s collapse, his punishment was reversed. Ikeda was appointed to a position equivalent to a naval commissioner, though ill health forced him to resign after only a few months and return quietly to Ibara.
The shōgunate would fall soon after. Japan would not remain closed.
What was remembered as a failed mission became the dawn of a new Japan. Ikeda later became an active advocate for sending embassies and students abroad and is also remembered as one of the early figures in the development of Japan’s wine industry.
Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shōgun of Japan, whose short rule coincided with the end of isolation and the beginning of radical transformation.
Ikeda Nagaoki. What began as a mission to stop the West became a glimpse of what Japan was about to become. He returned as an advocate for Western influence.