Just how high Belgium ranked on the scale of the Japanese is hard to tell. That it was the fourth country
visited was no doubt due more to its geographical position than to its rank on the scale of importance the
Japanese had in their minds. If anything, it figured more prominently on the ranking scale of the Bakufu
mission than on that of the Iwakura mission. With Britain keeping aloof and France the only major power
dedicated to the Bakufu, Belgium was in the eyes of the Bakufu potentially a welcome supportive state. By
1873 the political landscape of Europe had changed dramatically. Napoleon III had been toppled, France
was smarting from its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and Germany had just become a unified empire. What
I would like to call the Eidokufutsu mindset would soon dominate Japan’s approach to Europe, but it had
not yet at the time of the Iwakura mission.