A Brief Background of the Isolation
During the early 1600s, Japan limited it's contact with other nations to nearly none. During this time period, called the Isolation, Japan exclusively traded only to the Chinese and Dutch traders in Indonesia and limited its contact to China and Korea. During this time, the Japanese emperor had little political power, the country was ruled by a Tokugawa shogun, or military dictator, and samurais were the military force. The country was a feudal country and the emperor gave wealthy landowners, or the daimyo, plots of land that they could individually own. (1) The Tokugawa shogun that called for this Isolation was Tokugawa Iemitsu, who was a shogun from 1623 to 1641. (2 and 3) In 1853, this all changed when U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry, along with four U.S. navy ships, brought the Tokugawa shogun a letter from United States President Millard Fillmore kindly asking Japan to open themselves up to the world. In 1854, Commodore Perry returned to Japan with an even more U.S. navy ships to receive the Tokugawa shogun's response to the President's letter. The shogun's reply, now known as the Treaty of Kanagawa, allowed the United States to trade with the Japanese at two ports in Japan. This treaty ended the Japanese Isolation period and began the modernization of Japan and the emerging of an enormous world power. (1)
Sources
1. "Japan Modernizes." World History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, n.d. 720-23. Print.
2. "Japan Limits Western Contacts." World History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, n.d. 474-77. Print.
3. "Iemitsu, Tokugawa (1604–1651)." Teacher Genius. TCI, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.
2. "Japan Limits Western Contacts." World History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, n.d. 474-77. Print.
3. "Iemitsu, Tokugawa (1604–1651)." Teacher Genius. TCI, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.