Closing the door to Japan

Japan was always a special case among Asian nations. Isolated by the sea, Japan

didn’t succumb to the invasions of nomadic tribes who roamed the rest of East Asia

and rose to power as empire-builders (people such as the Mongols, whom I discuss in

Chapter 7). Although its imperial government was structured like China’s, since 1192

power in Japan was in the hands of a warrior class. Japanese authority was

concentrated in the shogun, a warlord nominally appointed by the emperor, but in

reality the shogun was far more powerful than the emperor was. The shoguns of the

Tokugawa family, which ruled from 1603–1868, were essentially military dictators over

all of Japan. Here’s a rundown on the first three of these shoguns:

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first of the Tokugawa shoguns, gained office at the

end of a series of messy civil wars. Tokugawa was suspicious of outsiders,

especially Europeans. When Portuguese traders set up shop in Japan (before

the Dutch secured a monopoly there), he worried that their influence could

undermine the authority of the shogun system. As he had just restored order to

the country, he was determined not to see his authority diluted.

Tokugawa Hidetada inherited his father’s distrust of European Christians.

Hidetada thought that if the Christians gained too many Japanese converts,

Japan’s ability to defend itself against a European invasion would be weakened.

The shogun persecuted Christians more and more severely; in 1622, his officials

in Nagasaki crucified 55 missionaries at once.

Tokugawa Iemitsu, the next shogun, threw all missionaries and most traders

out of Japan during his reign from 1623–1651. He outlawed foreign travel for

Japanese and forbade shipbuilders from building the big vessels needed for

long-range voyages. Iemitsu even restricted Buddhism, preferring the Confucian

emphasis on loyalty to superiors.

Popular posts from this blog

 Setting a precedent for conquest Where did Europeans of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries get the nerve to sail all over the world claiming chunks of other continents for their kings back home? You could argue that their attitude hearkens back to Rome’s imperial habits, or that the Europeans, many of barbarian stock (and thus perhaps Asian as much as European), were born to rapacious conquest. You could argue that, but your argument would be a stretch. More accurately, you could reach back to the Middle Ages, the need to fight off Viking invaders, and how that need prompted feudal vassals to rally around strong leaders. This trend began to build nations such as Saxon England as it took shape under Alfred the Great. But nation building was a slow process, and Europeans didn’t think in terms of a political state based on national identity. (For more on the emergence of strong kings, such as Alfred and Charlemagne, and the beginnings of nation building, see Chapter 6.) T...
Read more
 Circling the Planet Like Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who found a sea route to Asia. Like Christopher Columbus, Magellan was a non-Spanish commander of a Spanish flotilla that tried to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. Magellan’s expedition was successful in spite of the fact that it lost its captain, four of its five ships, all its officers, and most of its crew on the eventful voyage that went across the Atlantic, through the straits at the southern tip of South America (ever after called the Straits of Magellan), across the Pacific Ocean (Magellan named it), through the coveted ports of the Spice Islands (in today’s Indonesia), around Africa from the east, and home. Although he died on the trip, Magellan (whose name in Portuguese was Fernao de Magalhaes) gets credit as the first to circle the globe. He made it as far as the Philippines, and as Magellan may have earlier sailed that far east with Portuguese expeditions, you could say he person...
Read more
 Trying to forestall unrest in France The kings of France took some measures to prevent insurrections such as England’s in 1649. First, a clever cleric, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) set up governmental offices that cut into the power of the French nobles and concentrated the king’s authority. Chief Minister to Louis XIII, Richelieu suited Louis XIV, who succeeded in 1643, just fine. The English Civil War, which began the year before Louis XIV’s coronation, was a clash between King Charles I and members of Parliament. Louis XIV sought to eliminate a potential forum for dissent when he stopped calling the French equivalent of Parliament, the Estates-General, into session. Like the English Stuarts — James I and Charles I — Louis XIV believed that he, as king, was God’s deputy. His spectacularly luxurious palace at Versailles, the showplace of all Europe, reflected this conviction. Louis XIV raised taxes to support his free spending and waged an expensive war with Britain from 1701–1...
Read more