Difference Between Iwakura Mission And Oyatoi

The Iwakura Mission and the Oyatoi played huge roles in the social, political, and economic reforms of 1873-1894 in order to revise the hated Unequal Treaty System. Japan realized that they needed to become more powerful to be able to stay an independent nation. The way Japan could gain this power was to reform the systems that they had in place. Iwakura Tomomi had a mission with three steps. The first step was to show that Japan was changing. The way that they would do this would be step two, which is to get rid of the Unequal Treaties. Changing the Unequal Treaties would be done by step three, which was to see how the West foreign countries ran. Japan had realized that they were far less superior to the West and had to reform to be more like them. Members of the Iwakura Mission came back from the West and were amazed by the systems that they had. After visiting they figured out to look at it as “if the
The role of the Iwakura mission was to discover which countries strived in different industries and to find Oyatoi to help Japan learn and become more like them. Oyatoi were also known as honorable employees and were “foreign experts hired by the government” (Perez, The History of Japan, p. 90). Since the Oyatoi didn’t speak the Japanese language, the Japanese learned the languages of the Oyatoi, learned from them, and then taught the others what they learned. The Oyatoi were responsible for teaching many different things. For example, the Germans taught soldiers, physicians, and scientists. The French taught legal systems. The British taught sailors, textile workers, and steelmakers. Last, the Americans taught educational systems. The hiring of the Oyatoi were short term and the men and women were not allowed to own Japanese property. Learning from foreign countries out West was the best strategy to reforming the Japanese systems and this was possible through the Iwakura Mission and