Old Japan Images and text courtesy of Terry Bennett (Old Japan - www.old-japan.co.uk - EB-30018)
Officers of the 1862 Takenouchi Mission to Europe, Hong Kong, 1862, rich dark vintage albumen print, 288 x 230mm, in fine condition, mounted on contemporary album page, 353 x 273mm, with a pasted-on printed caption beneath the image: 198. Japanese Ambassadors to Europe. Annoyed that the first mission in 1860 had gone to the United States, the British and French ministers to Japan, Alcock and de Bellecourt respectively, persuaded the Tokugawa government of the importance of visiting Europe. Without any real enthusiasm for the idea, the government nominated a team of thirty-six six of whom had been on the earlier American mission. Passing through Hong Kong on their way to Europe, two senior members of the delegation, Matsudaira Yasunao and Kyogoku Takaaki, were photographed at Miller's studio. Milton Miller is rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest portrait photographers of nineteenth-century Asia, and this is a particularly fine example of his handiwork.
