CONTACT

Direct contact between Japan and Ottoman Empire started right after the 1868 Meiji Restorations when the young leaders of the new establishment toppled the Tokugawa regime and embarked upon radical reforms to reorder the Tokugawa order. As part of the new radical vision for modernizing Japan so that it would be a strong power just like those of the West, the newly founded Meiji government sent the Iwakura Mission in 1871-73 to investigate the world and hopefully negotiate to revise the unequal treaties that the Tokugawa Shoguns had signed in 1858. During Prince Iwakura's visit to Europe in 1871 the mission's secretary Fukuchi Genichiro visited Istanbul to study the Ottoman conditions. After the secretary's initial visit, Japanese travelers, diplomats, and investigators began to move freely trough the old world empire of the Balkans and the Middle East . From the Japanese perspective, contact with the Turks of the Ottoman world began Japan 's encounter with the world of Islam, as well as the multi-cultural milieu of the Eastern Mediterranean . The accounts of diplomats, such as Nakai Hiroshi, who wrote Manyu kiko in 1877, Yoshida Masaharu, who visited the Ottoman world in 1880, and the reports of military investigators such as Furukawa Nobuyoshi, and the famous Colonel Fukushima Yasumasa, who visited Istanbul during 1892-93 as part of a large journey on horseback through Siberia, reflects the Japanese interest in the Ottoman empire. As a result, Meiji publications of the era show numerous articles and illustrations about the Turkish world. Even the popular writer of political novels in the Meiji period, Shiba Shiro (1852-1922), had the young protagonists who represent the revolutionary Asian youth of the age meet with Ottoman intellectuals in Istanbul, then go on to visit Bursa and Gallipoli in his well-known work Kajin no Kigu 1886-1911 (Chance Meeting with a Beautiful Women)

While formal diplomatic relations could not start because of the legal problems related to the unequal treaties, Japanese visitors, including members of the Imperial family and Meiji aristocracy, helped cement relations relaying to the Ottoman Sultan a message of good will. The visit of Prince and Princess Komatsu in 1886 was a turning point in this respect.