French Military Mission to Japan (1872-1880)

The 1872–1880 French Military Mission to Japan was the second French military mission to that country. It followed the first French military mission to Japan (1867–68), which had ended with the Boshin War and the establishment of the rule of Emperor Meiji.

The formation of a second military mission to Japan was rather a surprise, as the first French Military Mission had sided with the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu against the ruling government of Emperor Meiji during the Boshin war. Furthermore, France had lost some of its military prestige, due to its defeat during the Franco-Prussian war.

Nevertheless, France still retained some attractiveness for Japan. This was expressed by the Japanese foreign minister Iwakura Tomomi during his visit (the Iwakura mission) to France in 1873:

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Mikado (Iwakura) said to our representative after our fatal combat against Germany: “We know about the sufferance France had to go through in this war, but it has not changed anything in our opinion on the merits of the French army, which showed great courage in the face of numerically superior troops”

The mission arrived in Japan in May 1872, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Antoine Marquerie (1824–1894). He was later replaced by Colonel Charles Claude Munier.

The mission was composed of nine officers, 14 non-commissioned officers, a music chief (Gustave Désiré Dragon), a veterinarian, and two craftsmen. A famous member of the mission was Louis Kreitmann (1851–1914), an army engineer and captain ("Capitaine du Génie"). Louis Kreitmann would later become director of the prestigious École Polytechnique. Kreitmann took about 500 photographs, which are now held at the Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises (Collège de France), Paris.

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