Theodore Roosevelt. They became friends and their relationship resulted later in Roosevelt's mediation at the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the Treaty of Portsmouth. Makino Nobuaki, a student member of the mission was to remark in his memoirs: "Together with the abolition of the han system, dispatching the Iwakura Mission to America and Europe must be cited as the most important events that built the foundation of our state after the Restoration." Nakae Chōmin, who was a member of the mission staff and the Ministry of Justice, stayed in France to study the French legal system with the radical republican Emile Acollas. Later he became a journalist, thinker and translator and introduced French thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Japan. Itinerary United States On 23 December 1871 the mission sailed from Yokohama on the , bound for San Francisco. Arriving in San Francisco on 15 January 1872, the group travelled by train via Salt Lake City and Chicago eventually reaching Washington, D.C. on 29 February. The mission's stay in the United States was extended with an attempt to negotiate new treaty rights, a task that necessitated two members of the party to return to Japan to obtain necessary letters of representation. Members of the Iwakura Mission were keenly interested in observing schools and learning more about educational policy. Tours to schools, universities and industrial locations in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. were made as a result. Unsuccessful in their attempts to renegotiate the existing unequal treaties the party eventually set sail for the United Kingdom in August 1872. United Kingdom On 17 August 1872 the Iwakura Mission arrived at Liverpool on the Cunard steamer Olympus. Traveling to London via Manchester the party spent much of late August and early September in and around the capital inspecting political, academic and military institutions, visiting the British Museum, travelling on the newly constructed London Underground and attending musical concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. After visits to the Royal dockyards at Portsmouth and a day visit to Brighton, the mission split into smaller groups to visit, among other places, Blair Atholl in the Highlands of Scotland, Edinburgh, the Yorkshire Dales and the industrial centers of Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle upon Tyne and Bradford. Iwakura Tomomi led the Manchester-Liverpool delegation. A visit that culminated on 7 October in a civic reception and banquet where toasts highlighted the leading role of the region in