“In the department of Public Works, now under my administration, the progress has been satisfactory. Railroads are being built, both in the eastern and western portions of the Empire. Telegraph wires are stretching over many hundred miles of our territory, and nearly one thousand miles will be completed within a few months. Lighthouses now line our coasts, and our shipyards are active. All these assist our civilisation, and we fully acknowledge our indebtedness to foreign nations. “As ambassadors, and as men, our hope is to return from this mission laden with results valuable to our country and calculated to advance permanently her material and intellectual condition. While bound to protect the rights and privileges of our people, we aim to increase our commerce, and by a corresponding increase of our productions, hope to create a healthy basis for their greater activity. “Time, so burdened with precious opportunities, we can ill afford to waste. Japan is anxious to press forward. The red disc in the centre of our national flag shall no longer appear like a wafer over a sealed empire, but henceforth be in fact, what it is designed to be, the noble emblem of the rising sun, symbolical of the awakening of Japan, and her wish to be found ever moving onward and upward amid the enlightened nations of the world.” The Iwakura Mission proved in every sense save one an immense success. One of the Secretaries was Mr Tadasu Hayashi, who subsequently in the diplomatic service of his country was accredited to the various capitals and won distinction in all, ultimately to represent Japan, as Viscount Hayashi, at the Court of St James. In the United States Prince Iwakura and his party everywhere were received with genuine enthusiasm, as giving by their visit substantial proof of the desire of Japan to enter at no distant date the comity of nations, and of the close neighbourship that exists between the two countries, their shores washed by the waves of the broad Pacific Ocean. As Prince Iwakura was the head of the Mission, the actual details of the journey will be found recorded in the pages of this volume devoted to a brief review of his share in the making of Modern Japan, and it may suffice here to mention that all returned to Yokohama in January 1873 and that the construction of a Cabinet on Occidental lines was there and then proceeded with.