Boshin War. The long negotiations The Iwakura Mission After the victory in the civil war, Emperor Mutsuhito began the complicated task of modernizing the country. In order to renegotiate the terms of previous treaties and better study western culture and technology, a great expedition around the globe was organized, led by Iwakura Tomomi. In England, he held fruitful talks with Lord Granville, British Foreign Secretary, in November 1872, in which Japan was asked to modernize its laws before it could effectively renegotiate treaties and abrogate extraterritoriality. Modernizing Japanese institutions thus became a priority for the imperial government. Extraterritoriality had previously been imposed to protect British citizens, but by the time the Japanese had built a reliable system of laws that could also be observed by westerners, it would no longer have been necessary. The modernization of Japan Internationally, all of the imperial government's efforts were concentrated on the abrogation of the so-called 'Unequal Treaties', which were in fact unilateral, non-reciprocal pacts that subscribed to an implicit subservience of the Japanese country to western nations. For the British authorities, the extraterritoriality clause was necessary to protect British citizens in Japan from Japanese law, which was considered barbaric and excessively cruel. The fact that there were no clear rules and that the Daimyo had full legislative and judicial autonomy within their own fiefdom was a further obstacle. It was therefore necessary for the imperial government to engage in substantial legislative reform. In 1871 a decree was issued abolishing the Han, the territories of the Daimyo, reorganizing them into prefectures, while in the same year the Mikado worked to reduce the death penalty and flogging. In May 1873, a new penal code was drafted that abolished torture, further reduced the use of capital punishment, and almost eliminated corporal punishment. However, these changes were not enough to ensure the abolition of extraterritoriality, which continued to be constantly discussed at the country's various embassies. The popular opposition In 1882, the Japanese public, also taking advantage of printing, began to mobilize to demand full judicial and tariff autonomy. On 15 June 1886, in order to satisfy the imperial authorities, an Anglo-German delegation presented a plan to introduce mixed courts in the country to supervise cases between two parties of different nationalities. Such an initiative had already been successfully tested in Egypt and it was assumed that it could represent a further step towards the abrogation of