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.

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Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.