This photo is of a Japanese embassy mission en-route to France, where they seeked to obtain French agreement to the closure of the Yokohama harbour to foreign trade. They didn’t succeed.
Honestly really cool. Somebody should make a game out of samurai in Egypt.
The youtube channel Voices of the Past has a lot of readings of firsthand written accounts of first contacts, unusual voyages, etc for anyone interested in this kind of thing. It’s really fascinating to hear in their own words what they thought of these places, people, and of themselves.
Imagine travelling all the way from Japan to France in the 19th Century, just for the French to be like “lol no”.
That’s cool as fuck
At the time, France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III who was the nephew of Napoleon I who had fought an early battle nearby: The Battle of the Pyramids. Of course Napoleon III was deposed during the Franco-Prussian War, 6 years after this photo was taken.
