A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

In the year 1624, the expulsion of the Spaniards from Japan took place, and in 1638 the Portuguese met the same fate. Two years prior to the latter event, the Yedo Bakufu adopted a measure which effectually terminated foreign intercourse. They ruled that to leave the country, or to attempt to do so, should constitute a capital crime; that any Japanese subject residing abroad should be executed if he returned; that the entire kith and kin of the Spaniards in Japan should be expelled, and that no ships of ocean-going dimensions should be built in Japan. This meant not only the driving out of all professing Christians, but also the imprisonment of the entire nation within the limits of the Japanese islands, as well as an effectual veto on the growth of the mercantile marine. It is worth noting that no act of spoliation was practised against these tabooed people. Thus, when those indicated by the edict—to the number of 287—left the country for Macao, they were allowed to carry away with them their whole fortunes.

The expulsion of the Spaniards did not leave the Portuguese in an improved condition. Humiliating restrictions continued to be imposed upon them. If a foreign priest were found upon any galleon bound for Japan, such priest and the whole of the crew of the galleon were liable to be executed, and many other irksome conditions were instituted for the control of the trade. Nor had the aliens even the satisfaction of an open market, for all the goods carried in their galleons had to be sold at a fixed price to a ring of licensed Japanese merchants from Osaka. In spite of all these deterrents, however, the Portuguese continued to send galleons to Nagasaki until the year 1637, when their alleged connexion with the Shimabara rebellion induced the Japanese to issue the final edict that henceforth any Portuguese ship coming to Japan should be burned, together with her cargo, and everyone on board should be executed.

This law was not enforced with any undue haste; ample time was given for compliance with its provisions. Possibly misled by this procrastination, the Portuguese at Macao continued to strive for the re-establishment of commercial relations until 1640, when a very sad event put an end finally to all intercourse. Four aged men, selected from among the most respected citizens of Macao, were sent to Nagasaki as ambassadors. Their ships carried rich presents and an earnest petition for the renewal of commercial intercourse. They were at once imprisoned, and having declined to save their lives by abjuring the Christian faith, the four old men and fifty-seven of their companions were decapitated, thirteen only being left alive for the purpose of conveying the facts to Macao. To these thirteen there was handed at their departure a document setting forth that, "So long as the sun warms the earth, any Christian bold enough to come to Japan, even if he be King Philip himself or the God of the Christians, shall pay for it with his head." One more effort to restore the old intimacy was made by the Portuguese in 1647, but it failed signally, and would certainly have entailed sanguinary results had not the two Portuguese vessels beat a timely retreat.

THE DUTCH AT DESHIMA

In 1609, the Dutch made their appearance in Japan, and received an excellent welcome. Ieyasu gave them a written promise that "no man should do them any wrong and that they should be maintained and defended as his own vassals." He also granted them a charter that wherever their ships entered, they should be shown "all manner of help, favour, and assistance." Left free to choose their own trading port, they made the mistake of selecting Hirado, which was eminently unsuited to be a permanent emporium of interstate commerce. Nevertheless, owing partly to their shrewdness, partly to their exclusive possession of the Spice Islands, and partly to their belligerent co-operation with the English against the Spaniards, they succeeded in faring prosperously for a time.

The day came, however, when, being deprived of freedom of trade and limited to dealings with a guild of Nagasaki and Osaka merchants, they found their gains seriously affected. Other vicissitudes overtook them, and finally the Japanese concluded that the safest course was to confine the Dutch to some position where, in a moment of emergency, they could easily be brought under Japanese control. Nagasaki was chosen as suitable, and there a Dutch factory was established which, for a time, flourished satisfactorily. From seven to ten Dutch vessels used to enter the port annually—their cargoes valued at some eighty thousand pounds (avdp.) of silver, and the chief staples of import being silk and piece-goods. Customs duties amounting to five per cent, were levied; 495 pounds of silver had to be paid annually as a rent for the little island of Deshima, and every year a mission had to proceed to Yedo from the factory, carrying presents for the chief Bakufu officials, which presents are said to have aggregated some 550 pounds of silver on each occasion. The Dutch traders, nevertheless, found their business profitable owing to purchases of gold and copper, which metals could be procured in Japan at much lower rates than they commanded in Europe. Thus, the now familiar question of an outflow of specie was forced upon Japanese attention at that early date, and, by way of remedy, the Government adopted, in 1790, the policy of restricting to one vessel annually the Dutch ships entering Nagasaki, and forbidding that vessel to carry away more than 350 tons of copper.

EFFECTS PRODUCED UPON JAPAN BY THE POLICY OF EXCLUSION

Whatever losses Japan's policy of seclusion caused to the nations which were its victims, there can be no doubt that she herself was the chief sufferer. During two and a half centuries she remained without breathing the atmosphere of international competition, or deriving inspiration from an exchange of ideas with other countries. While the world moved steadily forward, Japan stood practically unchanging, and when ultimately she emerged into contact with the Occident, she found herself separated by an immense interval from the material civilization it had developed.

The contrast between the Japan of the middle of the sixteenth and that of the middle of the seventeenth century has often been made by the historian of foreign influence. In 1541 the country was open to foreign trade, foreign civilization and foreign ideas and these were welcomed eagerly and, in accordance with the remarkable natural aptitude of the Japanese for adaptation, were readily assimilated. Not only were foreign traders allowed to come to Japan, but Japanese were allowed to go abroad. And all this was in the line of a long-continued Japanese policy—the policy thanks to which Chinese influence had made itself so strongly felt in Japan, and which had brought in Buddhism and Confucianism, not to speak of arts and letters of foreign provenance.

At the close of the hundred years, in 1641, all was changed. Japan was absolutely isolated. Foreigners were forbidden to enter, except the Dutch traders who were confined to the little island of Deshima. And natives were forbidden to go out, or to accept at home the religious teachings of foreigners. Only ships suited for the coastwise trade might be built. The nation's intercourse with Occidental civilization was shut off, and its natural power of change and growth through foreign influences was thus held in check. The wonder is that it was not destroyed by this inhibition. The whole story of foreign intercourse as it has so far been told makes it plain that the reason why it was prohibited was in the nature of foreign propaganda and not in any unreadiness of the Japanese for western civilization.