Mori Arinori: Japan’s Diplomat in Washington, D.C.

This article briefly examines the life of Mori Arinori, who in 1871 became Japan’s first resident diplomat in Washington, D.C., with the primary assignment of making preparations for the upcoming Iwakura Mission. Mori’s pedigree of being from a samurai family from Satsuma domain and his unusual background of having already lived in Britain and the United States led senior officials of the new Meiji Imperial government to name Mori to the all-important position of being Japan’s top representative to the United States despite his youth – he was only 23 years old at the time of his appointment. Notwithstanding his occasional impatience with Japanese traditions and the more reserved senior officials of the Iwakura Embassy, Mori’s connections in Washington D.C., his understanding of American society, and his skill at the English language significantly contributed to the institutional, cultural, and economic information that members of the Japanese delegation gathered. Mori’s post-Washington career as an intellectual, diplomat, and top education official in Japan in the late 1870s and 1880s also contributed to his country’s progression from the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the cusp of Japan’s international recognition as a major power in a world being transformed by industrialization and imperialism.