Germany apparently did its best to honour the Japanese mission, which was appreciated by the Japanese.
There are remarkable differences from the visit of the Takenouchi mission, just 11 years earlier. First of all,
whereas a huge crowd watched the mission in Berlin in 1862 on several occasions, there was not much
public interest in the mission in 1873. The newspapers watched the sojourn and reported the daily movements,
but just with a few lines, longer articles being the exception. Berlin had become used to foreign missions,
and the Japanese had adapted European customs and clothing and no longer looked as exotic as eleven
years before, when they appeared in traditional clothing, the hakama, with the hair traditionally made up.
Moreover, the mission was, as we can see from Kume’s report—with the New Japan in mind—much more
serious about collecting information and understanding the West than the earlier missions