The journey in search of knowledge: a brief sketch of the Iwakura Tomomi mission

The aim of the paper is to make an initial reconstruction and to undertake a preliminary analysis of the profound expedition of Japanese statesmen to the West (so called The Iwakura Mission) held in the second half of the nineteenth century. The basic purpose of The Iwakura Mission was to search for information and data (especially related to the shape of the legal and political system which would strengthen the Japanese state and society). The Iwakura Mission was a paradigmatic example not only for the next Japanese overseas expeditions, but also for the very similar embassies undertaken in the Middle Kingdom. The Author attempts to work out some preliminary findings necessary to propose more sophisticated set of hypotheses related to the processes of traveling as a source of knowledge on legal and political issues in the future. In this sense, the study of The Iwakura Mission is also a small contribution to developing both a socio-legal theory of inter-cultural transmission of legal knowledge and general theory of copying foreign laws