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The Lamb of God
The exact expression “lamb of God” does not appear in the Old Testament, however, the idea and imagery behind that title, especially when read through the lens of the New Testament, is deeply rooted in several Old Testament sacrificial themes. The primary image is that of the Passover lamb described in the Book of Exodus. In Exodus 12 each family is to take “a lamb, one for each household” (v.3). The lamb must be “a year-old male and without blemish” (v.5). Its blood is placed on the doorposts so that the Angel of Death passes over the house (v.13). The Passover lamb is the lamb appointed by God for Israel’s deliverance; in this way it is the “Lamb of God.” Another way to describe this imagery is a divinely appointed lamb whose blood saves God’s people from death. The Baptist’s use of the phrase anticipates Jesus’ death on the Cross which saves God’s people from something far worse than death.
Exodus 29 and Numbers 28 point to a daily morning and evening offering of lambs understood as offerings to the LORD, commanded by Him as an ongoing and atoning sacrifice on behalf of God’s people. Again, although not titled “Lamb of God,” the imagery is clear when seen through NT lenses.
The reference with the most theologically charged background comes from Isaiah 53 and is associated with Lent and Good Friday. “Like a lamb led to slaughter, or a sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53 describes the Suffering Servant whose life becomes an offering for sin as “The LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all” (v.6) and “He shall take away the sins of many” (v.12). This lamb is not literally a sacrificial animal but a figure of a person who fulfills the role of a sacrificial lamb given by God for sin.
In Genesis 22 we read the account of the binding of Isaac the son of Abraham. The father tells his son: “God himself will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.” (v.8) And indeed, God provides the lamb for the offering that will redeem all humanity. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
When the Baptist proclaims “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” – there is a whole story of promise, covenant, and redemption that is being announced. It is time to prepare.
Image credit: Saint John the Baptist Preaching to the Masses in the Wilderness | Pieter Brueghel the Younger | Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris | Wikimedia Commons, PD-US
Something New
One of the quiet truths of Scripture is that God often begins something new not at moments of obvious strength, but at moments that feel empty, unproductive, or closed off.
Today’s first reading places us with Hannah, a woman living with a deep and painful barrenness. Her suffering is not only physical; it touches her identity, her place in the family, and her sense of blessing. Even her husband’s sincere affection cannot heal the wound. His question “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” reveals love, but also a misunderstanding of how deep her sorrow runs.
Hannah’s barrenness is more than a private tragedy. It mirrors the state of Israel at the end of the time of the Judges. The people are struggling to produce faithful leadership, uncertain of their future. Nothing seems to be coming forth.
And yet, it is precisely here that God is at work.
In the Gospel, Mark tells us that Jesus begins his proclamation after John has been arrested. What looks like a failure, even a silencing of God’s voice, becomes the moment when something new begins. Jesus steps forward and announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.”
Both readings remind us that God does not wait for ideal conditions.
Hannah cannot fix her situation. The fishermen are not searching for a new mission; they are tending nets, repeating familiar routines. In both cases, God’s initiative breaks into places that are part of life: grief, routine, limitation and more.
That is often where we find ourselves as well. There are seasons when our prayer feels dry, our efforts seem unfruitful, our work repetitive. We may experience forms of barrenness in relationships, in ministry, in health, or in hope itself.
Scripture does not deny those experiences. It names them. But it also insists that barrenness is not the end of the story.
God’s new chapters do not begin with control, but with availability. Hannah’s sorrow will eventually become a prayer. The fishermen’s ordinary day becomes a calling. None of them yet know the outcome; they only know the moment they are in.
And this is perhaps the word we need to hear: God does not require us to manufacture fruitfulness. He asks us to remain present, faithful, and open even when nothing seems to be happening.
When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he does not explain where the path will lead. When God begins to work in Hannah’s life, she cannot yet see how her pain will be transformed. But in both cases, something new begins precisely where human resources run out.
In these readings we are invited not to fear our barren places, but to bring them honestly before God. The places that feel like “same stuff, different day” may be the very places where God is preparing to act.
Because in the economy of grace, barrenness is often not a dead end. It is a beginning.
Image credit: Domenico Ghirlandaio | Calling the Apostles | 1481 | Sistine Chapel, Vatican | PD-US
The Americans in the Western Pacific
Commodore Perry’s mission was not the first American overture to the Japanese. In the 1830s, the Far Eastern squadron of the U.S. Navy sent several missions from its regional base in Guangzhou (Canton), China, but in each case, the Japanese did not permit them to land, and they lacked the authority from the U.S. Government to force the issue. In 1851, President Millard Fillmore authorized a formal naval expedition to Japan to return shipwrecked Japanese sailors and request that Americans stranded in Japan be returned to the United States.
Perry first sailed to the Ryukyus and the Bonin Islands southwest and southeast of the main Japanese islands, claiming territory for the United States, and demanding that the people in both places assist him. He then sailed north to Edo (Tokyo) Bay, carrying a letter from the U.S. President addressed to the Emperor of Japan. By addressing the letter to the Emperor, the United States demonstrated its lack of knowledge about the Japanese government and society. At that time, the Japanese emperor was little more than a figurehead, and the true leadership of Japan was in the hands of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
His mission was to complete an agreement with the Japanese Government for the protection of shipwrecked or stranded Americans and to open one or more ports for supplies and refueling. The following spring, Perry returned with an even larger squadron to receive Japan’s answer.
The Japanese grudgingly agreed to Perry’s demands, and the two sides signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854. According to the terms of the treaty, Japan would protect stranded seamen and open two ports for refueling and provisioning American ships: Shimoda and Hakodate. Japan also gave the United States the right to appoint consuls to live in these port cities, a privilege not previously granted to foreign nations. This treaty was not a commercial treaty, and it did not guarantee the right to trade with Japan. Still, in addition to providing for distressed American ships in Japanese waters, it contained a most-favored-nation clause, so that all future concessions Japan granted to other foreign powers would also be granted to the United States. As a result, Perry’s treaty provided an opening that would allow future American contact and trade with Japan.
There were several reasons why the United States became interested in revitalizing contact between Japan and the West in the mid-19th century. First, the combination of the opening of Chinese ports to regular trade and the annexation of California, creating an American port on the Pacific, ensured that there would be a steady stream of maritime traffic between North America and Asia. Then, as American traders in the Pacific replaced sailing ships with steam ships, they needed to secure coaling stations, where they could stop to take on provisions and fuel while making the long trip from the United States to China. The combination of its advantageous geographic position and rumors that Japan held vast deposits of coal increased the appeal of establishing commercial and diplomatic contacts with the Japanese. Additionally, the American whaling industry had pushed into the North Pacific by the mid-18th century, and sought safe harbors, assistance in case of shipwrecks, and reliable supply stations. In the years leading up to the Perry mission, a number of American sailors found themselves shipwrecked and stranded on Japanese shores, and tales of their mistreatment at the hands of the unwelcoming Japanese spread through the merchant community and across the United States.
The same combination of economic considerations and belief in Manifest Destiny that motivated U.S. expansion across the North American continent also drove American merchants and missionaries to journey across the Pacific. At the time, many Americans believed that they had a special responsibility to modernize and civilize the Chinese and Japanese. In the case of Japan, missionaries felt that Protestant Christianity would be accepted where Catholicism had generally been rejected. Other Americans argued that, even if the Japanese were unreceptive to Western ideals, forcing them to interact and trade with the world was a necessity that would ultimately benefit both nations.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.Source Credit: “The United States and the Opening to Japan, 1853” | Office of the Historian, Department of State.
In the Wilderness
The Gospel of John begins with the well known prologue that proclaims Jesus as the preexistent and incarnate Word of God who has revealed the Father to us: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) The rest of the first chapter forms the introduction to the gospel proper and consists of the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus. John is presented as “a man sent from God” who “came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.” (John 1:6-8) That naturally raises the question – who exactly is this wilderness character? Which is exactly what the Jerusalem delegation asks of him. They want to know if he is some end-time figure: the Christ, Elijah, the promised great prophet like Moses (cf. Deut. 18:15, 18)? After denying each one of those identities he finally tells the delegation who he is. He is the end-time figure spoken of in Scripture. He is “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (1:23)
That phrase often heard in the season of Advent is taken from Isaiah 40:3 which, interestingly, reads slightly different than the Baptist’s response. In John 1:23 it is the voice of the one crying out in/from the wilderness – in other words, telling us the location of the messenger. In Isaiah the messenger cries out, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” – in other words the messenger is speaking to those who are in the wilderness. Why the difference? The Hebrew version of Isaiah 40:3 is slightly different from the Greek translation of Isaiah in the Septuagint (LXX). John 1:23 is clearly taken from the LXX.
John the Evangelist adapts Isaiah’s message to the person of John the Baptist. If God intends people to be prepared in the wilderness, it makes sense for the voice to cry in the wilderness to call for such preparations. Another important part of the message is that God will come to his people through the wilderness. The wilderness reference echoes many such OT references, for example, Habakkuk 3:3 – “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.” Both Teman and Paran are wilderness areas. In particular, Paran is connected to Israel’s wandering in the wilderness after the events in and around Mt. Sinai (Num 10:12; 12:16). Paran is described as the place from which God’s glory “shone forth” in Moses’ Blessing (Deut 33:2). The wilderness is a fitting figure for the desolate condition of God’s people in the Baptist’s day. There is a sense that the Spirit of God that Ezekiel saw leaving the Jerusalem Temple during the Babylonian siege of Jerusaleam almost 600 years prior, is now returning – not to the Temple – but to the people.
How are God’s people to prepare the way for this moment in salvation history? While, again, not explicitly stated, the probable answer is by way of repentance. If Yahweh is to return, his people must prepare the way by repenting of the sins that caused them to be led into exile. This is borne out clearly by the Baptist’s own message: “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.” (Mt 3:8). As Isa 40:1–2 makes clear, God’s ultimate purpose for his people is not judgment but salvation, life rather than death (cf. the Fourth Evangelist’s words in John 3:17–18; and Jesus’ words in John 12:47). According to the Johannine Gospel, the Baptist’s witness centered on Jesus’ role in the divine plan of salvation as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29, 36). At its very heart, the purpose of John’s baptism and ministry is described as being bound up with revealing Jesus’ true identity to Israel.
Image credit: Saint John the Baptist Preaching to the Masses in the Wilderness | Pieter Brueghel the Younger | Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris | Wikimedia Commons, PD-US
You are loved
We live in a world of performance. If you are a sports fan you have access to an amazing array of real-time statistics on a football receiver’s speed, distance the pass traveled, and so much more. In swimming, it used to be that you watched the race and at the end the final times were posted. Now, mid-race there are on-screen statistics of speed in ft/sec and measures of the distance between swimmers. We live in a world of performance. Work has productivity measures, school has grades, … maybe homilies need a real time scoring system like diving or gymnastics.
We live in a world where our worth is often measured by productivity, recognition, credentials, and visibility. From an early age we learn, often without being explicitly taught, that approval follows achievement which signals that you are valued because of what you do, what you produce, how you compare. As a priest, listening to folks, it is evident that similar logic carries over into our relationship with God.
Subtly, almost unconsciously, we can begin to believe that God’s pleasure is lost or gained through activity, sacrifice, or visible success. When things go well, we feel affirmed – “I am blessed” we might think. When things are not going so well, we feel something is off kilter. Faith can become another arena of performance. “I need to pray more.” “Read more scripture.” “Go on retreat.” “Then things will be OK.” There can be a performative intention behind all those things as a means to seek God’s pleasure.
You might be thinking, “Jesus’ life is pretty performative!” And indeed, as we move from the Christmas Season into Ordinary Time, we will see the public and very active ministry of Jesus unfold as He performs miracles, healings, casting out demons, forgiving sins, controlling nature and so much more. All very performative and with a purpose: to affirm that the Kingdom of God is indeed upon the people.
But not today.
There are two things that stand out for me in the gospel reading as Jesus is first stepping into public view, when his ministry formally begins, how does He begin? Not with preaching, not with healing, not with miracles but by waiting. Not only that, before any performance, achievement, before any measurable success in ministry and mission, the Father names him Beloved. Let’s explore these two things.
We live in a performative world. We want to do something for God before we have truly stood before God. But Jesus begins differently. He stands in line with sinners. He listens to John preach. He receives John’s baptism. He submits himself to the Father’s will as mediated through another human being: “for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Jesus’ public ministry is born not from initiative or performance, but from surrender. Jesus chooses the place of humility. He does not separate himself from the brokenness of humanity. He enters it quietly, patiently, without exemption. He lines up and waits his turn. This is not a gesture of convenience; it is a revelation of who God is.
Isaiah had already given us the pattern: “Here is my servant… not crying out, not shouting.” God’s chosen one does not impose himself. He does not force righteousness upon the world. He enters the world gently, from within, sharing its condition. And only after this act of submission does heaven open. The Spirit descends not upon Jesus not as a wonder-worker, but upon Jesus, the obedient Son. The Father’s voice does not praise achievement, but relationship: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The Father’s voice does not say, “Now I will love you because you have begun your mission.” It says, “You are my beloved.” Full stop. This is not sentimentality. It is identity; our deepest identity.
We often speak about the Sacrament of Baptism as a commissioning to act, but it is first a declaration of identity and belonging. Before we are sent, we are claimed. Before we are asked to serve, we are named beloved. We are baptized not because we are finished products, but because God chooses to stand with us where we are. His true holiness is not distance from our human weakness, but is a faithful presence within it.
Because when we begin where Jesus began — in humility, submission, and trust — then the same promise is spoken over us: You are my beloved.
Jesus’ identity as beloved does not protect him from hardship. In fact, it leads him into the wilderness, into conflict, and eventually into the Cross. But what sustains him through all of it is not success, but the unshakeable knowledge of who he is before the Father.
That same identity is given to us in baptism.
To live as the beloved does not mean disengaging from responsibility, effort or hardship. It means being mindful that performance does not define our worth. It means allowing ourselves to rest secure in God’s pleasure even when our work is incomplete, our efforts misunderstood, our plans undone, or we are at wit’s end.
In a world that constantly asks, “What have you accomplished?” The Gospel challenges us to answer a different question: “To whom do you belong?”
When we live from that place, fear loosens its grip. Comparison loses its power. And love – real, patient, self-giving love becomes possible. Because only those who know they are already loved are truly free to give themselves away.
You are loved. Remember that and let tomorrow bring what may. You are loved.
Image credit: The Baptism of Christ, Juan Fernández de Navarrete, “El Mudo” | Museo del Prado, Madrid | Wikimedia Commons | PD-US
An Antiphon for the Baptism of the Lord
The solider baptizes his King, the servant his Lord, John his Savior; the waters of the Jordan tremble, a dove hovers as a sign of witness, and the voice of the Father is heard: This is my Son.
What does all this mean?
This coming Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. As already mentioned, Matthew’s primary focus is not on the baptism itself, but on the events that immediately follow: the heavens opening up, the descent of the Spirit and the voice of God. But let’s return for a moment to consider the meaning of John’s baptism. John’s baptism was not a sacramental baptism, but rather was a preparatory, symbolic, prophetic action. It was a sign of repentance (Matthew 3:6; Mark 1:4), a ritual preparation for the coming Messiah, a public acknowledgment of one’s desire to turn away from sin, and a way of awakening Israel to expect God’s imminent saving act.
This was not Jesus’ baptism – He did not need purification. He did not become holy by the waters. Rather, He made the waters holy by entering them. (cf. St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Ambrose, St. Thomas Aquinas) By descending into waters used for repentance, Christ prepares them to become the instrument of rebirth. In this He was baptized to reveal Himself as Messiah and sanctify the waters for Christian baptism.
Importantly, Jesus identifies Himself with humanity. John’s call for repentance was a call for the people to remember that they were people in Covenant with God. His wilderness ministry called them to the Jordan River at the spot where the people first crossed into the land promised in the Abrahamic covenant. They are called to return to the beginning, reenter the land, and once again be a covenant people. By his baptism, Jesus shows that he stands with the covenant people.
But at the water’s edge it is revealed that he is the Son of God and thus at the same time is the maker of the Covenant, the means by which God has chosen to redeem us. At the water’s edge Jesus inaugurated His public ministry, fulfilled all righteousness and so began the saving plan of the Father.
Image credit: The Baptism of Christ, Juan Fernández de Navarrete, “El Mudo” | Museo del Prado, Madrid | Wikimedia Commons | PD-US
An interim thought
At the beginning of the Edo Period, Daimyo Hideyoshi had grand visions of a Pan-Asia empire that included China. Under the leadership of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the country set clear restrictions that mostly isolated Japan from face-to-face contact with the world. The nation remained open to commercial trade but not to social corruption from outside influences. Through the Dutch in Nagasaki, the advances in science and technology were available to them. But their world was largely an “internal” world. What was the impact of all this on their self-view vis-a-vis other peoples and nations?
With the advent of the Asia-Pacific war in the 20th century, there was a clear doctrine of racial, cultural and national superiority whose rightful destiny was as leader of the Asia Pacific regions (and perhaps more). But was that present in the 19th century when Japan became more open to the world?
What emerged was a layered self-view of cultural centrality and moral distinctiveness. The Tokugawa Shogunate did not view itself in terms of being the center of an empire, but it did see itself as a center of a superior civilization. Its criteria included moral cultivation, ritual propriety, and social harmony, governed by proper hierarchy and order.
This can be seen by its changing view of China. Where once China was the center of learning, governance, religious thought and social order, that view was increasingly a distant memory. Classical Chinese learning was still revered but in the present the Japanese held that the Chinese had lost their moral position in the world (Confucian) by internal revolts and external wars. Japan now viewed themselves as the true heir of classical civilization. They made this judgment as an ethical and historical assessment, not a judgement on the Chinese people.
Westerners were often described as technically skilled, morally crude, and socially disordered. Christianity was seen as a western import and was condemned not as “foreign” per se, but as socially destabilizing and politically subversive. Westerners were not viewed as racially inferior, but as culturally dangerous to the higher Japanese civilization and morally undisciplined. At the same time, the Japanese became far more certain and confident in their own institutions and traditions, becoming somewhat immune from foreign moral claims. Where once the Japanese looked to China and others for recognition and approbation, they no longer sought it or needed it.
Sakoku was certainly cultural insulation, but one that did not mandate superiority. It is later thinkers in another time that would radicalize the fruits of the Tokugawa Shogunate to become the Japan facing the world in the 20th century.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
The Voice
This coming Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. “And a voice came from the heavens, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” (Mt 13:17). The voice from heaven speaks the words that are repeated at the scene of the Transfiguration (Mt 17:5) and reveal God’s proclamation of Jesus’ full identity. After Jesus’ acceptance of John’s baptism as the will of God for him, God declares his pleasure because of the obedience and more fundamentally, declares the unique relationship between God the Father and his Son.
The words of the declaration are usually understood to be derived from one or both of Isa 42:1 and Ps 2:7. “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased.” (Isaiah 42:1) and goes on to say that God has put his Spirit upon him, which links closely with what we have seen in v. 16. “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” (Ps 2:7) in which God addresses his anointed king
The echo of both passages lend themselves to Matthew’s focus of fulfillment passages. While his primary fulfillment focus will be Jesus as the One to come, greater than Moses, Matthew is attentive to other fulfillments: son, servant, king.
As R.T. France points out: “God is not quoting the OT, nor setting a puzzle for scripturally erudite hearers to unravel. He is declaring in richly allusive words that this man who has just been baptized by John is his own Son in whom he delights. From this point on Matthew’s readers have no excuse for failing to understand the significance of Jesus’ ministry, however long it may take the actors in the story to reach the same christological conclusion (14:33; 16:16; 26:63–64). It will be this crucial revelation of who Jesus is which will immediately form the basis of the initial testing which Jesus is called to undergo in 4:1–11: “If you are the Son of God …” (4:3, 6). And there, as in the account of the baptism, Jesus’ sonship will be revealed in his obedience to his Father’s will.” (Matthew, 124)
Image credit: The Baptism of Christ, Juan Fernández de Navarrete, “El Mudo” | Museo del Prado, Madrid | Wikimedia Commons | PD-US
Japanese Isolation
In the previous post, in the broadest of terms, we traced the relationship of China (and by extension Korea) and Japan from pre-history up to the 17th century and the beginning of the Edo period of Japanese history. Also known as the Tokugawa period, this was a period in Japan’s history which experienced prolonged peace and stability, urbanization, economic growth, and expansion of the arts and culture. During this period (1601-1868) the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional daimyo, or feudal lords.
The shogunate believed that the source of the previous era’s instability was the militarism and expansionism of Daimyo Hideyoshi, exacerbated by the dual effect of European traders and Christianity – most notably Portugal and Catholicism. Japan’s governance was dominated by regional daimyō who were rulers/war lords of regions (domains) of Japan. The daimyō discovered that direct trade with the Portuguese increased their wealth and power, even more so if the daimyō directed the people of the domain to accept Christianity. As a result, the traditional Shinto religion was weakened and, in some cases, virtually disappeared, especially among the poor and peasants.
As a result, the Tokugawa Shogunate began to implement policies designed to limit the access of the regional daimyō to foreign trade. The collection of policies issued between 1633 and 1639 are known today as Sakoku which essentially translates as the “locking of the country.” The name was a description coined in a later period. In their own day they were known as the “maritime restrictions.” There were several issues that gave rise to these policies:
- The need for control and stability: the Shogunate wanted to prevent powerful regional lords (daimyo) from gaining wealth and power through foreign trade, which could challenge the central government’s control.
- Elimination of European colonial influence: to remove the colonial ambitions of Spain and Portugal, who were perceived as threats while at the same time restrict Dutch trade to Nagasaki
- Fear of Christianity: the Tokugawa Shogunate viewed Christianity as a subversive force that threatened the social order and the Shogun’s authority, leading to the persecution of Christians and expulsion of missionaries. The advantage of the Dutch trading relationship is that the Dutch Trading companies had no interest in evangelization.
Of interest were restrictions on Japanese citizens. The 1633 edict prohibited any Japanese citizen who had lived abroad for 5 years or more from ever returning to Japan. In 1638, the prohibition was expanded to exclude any Japanese citizen who had ever resided abroad for any amount of time.
During the implementation of the policies, the Shimabara Revolt gave an added incentive to further expand the restriction so as to preserve Tokugawa supremacy, enforce a rigid social structure, and ensure internal peace.
Shimabara Revolt
There was one major disturbance to the relative peace of the Edo period: the Shimabara Revolt. The daimyō of the Shimabara Domain levied incredibly high taxes on the people in order to build Shimabara Castle and other regal endeavors. The daimyō was very anti-Christian, a faith popular among the poor, because he believed it was destructive of the social order. There were strict laws in the Domain prohibiting Christianity which was actively persecuted. In December 1637, an alliance of local rōnin and mostly Catholic peasants rebelled against the Tokugawa shogunate due to discontent over the daimyō policies. The Tokugawa shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops supported by the Dutch to suppress the rebels who were defeated.
After the rebellion’s end, the shogunate forces executed an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers as punishment. The daimyō, whose policies had fomented the revolt, was executed. The shogunate suspected that European Catholics had been involved in spreading the rebellion. As a result, the Portuguese traders were driven out of the country, an existing ban on Christian religion was strongly enforced, and an already ongoing policy of national seclusion was made stricter by 1639. Christianity in Japan survived only by going underground.
Sakoku … sort of…
Japan highly regulated its borders to most foreigners from 1639 until the mid-1850s. This isolation, enforced by banning most foreigners from entering and Japanese from leaving, lasted over 200 years until American “gunboat diplomacy” forced Japan to change policies, leading to the Meiji Restoration and modernization. In the retelling of the event, the myth grew that Admiral Perry’s sailing into Tokyo Bay forcibly opened Japan. Japan was “closed” to economic trade with the U.S., but Japan was never “closed.”
Japan was not “closed” under the sakoku policy. There was extensive trade with China through the port of Nagasaki, in the far west of Japan, that included a residential area for the Chinese. As well there were trade and diplomatic missions received from Korea. On a smaller scale there was also trade with the people of Hokkaido (in modern times the northernmost home island of Japan, then a separate Aniu people.) There was also trade with the Ryūkyū Kingdom whose major island is Okinawa. The only European contact permitted was the Dutch enclave on Dejima Island in Nagasaki harbor. Western scientific, technical and medical innovations flowed into Japan through Rangaku (“Dutch learning”). In this way Japan was still open to the developments in Europe of science and other topics.
Natural Isolation
Japan was “isolated” in ways that were natural to its context. It is an island nation whose closest neighbors, China and Korea, lived on the other side of the “Sea of Japan,” a body of water known by the Koreans as the “East Sea” and by the Chinese as the “Whale Sea.” It is a body of water which is often turbulent and stormy and thus naturally limits movement and trade between Japan and its mainland neighbors.
In addition to the maritime isolation, the topology of Japan contains mountain ranges that separate the eastern and western parts of Japan. This limited movement and contact between domains naturally led to a variety of dialects. By the 17th-century Japan had a variety of dialects (hōgen), with significant differences between eastern and western regions, and the Edo (Tokyo) dialect gaining influence over the traditional Kansai (Kyoto) standard during the Edo Era. The relative stability of the Tokugawa era, coupled with restrictions on movement between domains, allowed regional dialects to flourish and diverge further.
Japan was also “isolated” by language from its closest neighbors. Japanese and Korean languages are typologically similar (how the language works) and share loanwords from Chinese, but they aren’t genetically related to Chinese or necessarily each other. A whimsical description is that they are more like cousins who grew up in different houses but borrowed furniture from the same rich relative (China).
We will continue this look into Japan’s “isolation” period in our next post when the Americans arrive in the Western Pacific.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
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