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#27 Four Contact Points
Click here to go to the YouTube video Throughout the Edo period, Japan was in a state of “sakoku”, or seclusion, with its doors mostly closed to foreign countries. However, Japan had four windows to the outside world. They were Nagasaki, Satsuma, Tsushima, and Ezo, which is present-day Hokkaido. Nagasaki was the most important of these. The Shogunate built an artificial island called “Dejima” in Nagasaki and established a Dutch trading post there. The Netherlands was the only Western country that was allowed to trade with Japan. This was because the Dutch promised not to proselytize Christianity. Access to Dejima was severely restricted, however, many scholars from various parts of…
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#26 SAKOKU -exclusionism of the Edo shogunate-
Click here to go to YouTube video In his masterpiece “Moby-Dick, or The Whale” the 19th-century American author Herman Melville described Japan as a “double-bolted land”. This is because, in the Edo period (1603-1867), Japan was closed to the rest of the world for more than 200 years, keeping American whalers away. In this episode, we will look at how the exclusionism of the Edo shogunate began. At the beginning of the Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu was active in foreign trade. Merchant ships with Ieyasu’s permits were actively traveling to and from Thailand, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries, and a number of Japanese towns were established in port cities…
