Sakoku -- Japan's Isolation Policy
The Tokugawa shogunate's sakoku edicts of 1633-1639 banned Japanese from travelling abroad, expelled most foreigners, prohibited the building of ocean-going ships, and restricted foreign trade to a single Chinese and single Dutch trading post at Dejima Island in Nagasaki harbour. Christianity, associated with the recently crushed Shimabara Rebellion (1637-1638), a Christian peasant revolt, was the primary target. The sakoku system lasted over two centuries until Commodore Perry's arrival forced Japan open in 1853. Its consequences were paradoxical: Japan avoided colonisation and maintained internal peace, but fell technologically behind the industrialising West. The Dutch East India Company (VOC), as the only Western power permitted trade, maintained a small window of Rangaku (Dutch Learning) through which Japanese scholars absorbed Western science and medicine.
- Year: 1635 CE
- Category: Political
