Closure of Japan

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The closure of Japan ( Japanese 鎖 国 , sakoku , literally: "land closure") is the key term for the foreign policy of the Tokugawa shogunate from the 1630s to the forced opening of the country by Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1853.

Restriction of relations with foreign countries

Since the 1580s, the Japanese rulers repeatedly issued edicts that more or less restricted the activities of the Portuguese and Spaniards operating in the country , called "southern barbarians" ( Nambanjin ) by the locals . For a long time these were just ad hoc responses to incidents, which often had no practical impact. But over the decades this trend intensified. Finally, between 1633 and 1639, several decrees were issued that prevented the “southern barbarians” from entering Japan and Japanese who had lived abroad for more than 5 years (and possibly converted to Christianity there) from returning. After 1635 there was a general ban on entry and exit for the Japanese. In the background of these measures there is, among other things, the Shimabara uprising of the predominantly Christian rural population of Shimabara and Amakusa in 1639, which was suppressed only with great effort , but also the endeavor to stop the lucrative overseas trade of the feudal lords in the west of the country, which the still young Tokugawa regimes could become dangerous.

Since 1639, after the expulsion of the last Spaniards and Portuguese, only the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC) remained as a European trading partner. With the absence of Portuguese ships, the economic base of the imperial direct domain Nagasaki collapsed, which is why the Dutch were forced to move their settlement from Hirado , where the local prince Matsura had given them a free hand, to the artificial island of Dejima / Deshima in the port of Nagasaki in 1640 relocate. This trading post became the only legal source of goods and information from western countries. The Japanese "Holland interpreters" ( oranda tsūji ) deployed there spoke mainly Portuguese for many decades; as her education and career became systematic, her Dutch language skills developed.

Thanks to the influence of capable factory doctors such as Caspar Schamberger , Engelbert Kaempfer , Carl Peter Thunberg or Philipp Franz von Siebold and educated factory managers ( opperhoofden ) such as Andreas Cleyer , Isaac Titsingh , Jan Cock Blomhoff or Hendrik Doeff , Dejima became a gateway for western science and technology. In addition to the merchandise, instruments of all kinds, books, models, medicines, oil paintings, maps, globes and other objects entered the country as so-called rarities; they stimulated the interest of the recipients and gradually led to what has been called rangaku (Dutch studies) since the second half of the 18th century . In the 17th century, Japanese silver and gold played an important role in the development of East Asia's monetary economy . After the decline in precious metal exports, copper (in stick form) dominated, which was also used for minting coins . Precious Japanese lacquer work , porcelain and other objects adorned the castles and houses of wealthy Europeans. Until the 18th century, Japan also played an important role in imparting acupuncture and moxibustion to the West. Gambir , refined in Japan, was available as Terra japonica in every European pharmacy.

Europeans who tried to enter Japan on their own could face the death penalty or life imprisonment. One of the few who managed to land was the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Battista Sidotti in 1708 . He was imprisoned and died in 1714 at the age of 46.

European and Japanese perception

Print edition of the translation of Kaemmer's treatise on Japanese closing politics (Kurosawa Okinamaro: Ijinkyōfuden, 1850, foreword)

For the Europeans, these measures had the effect of isolating Japan from the outside world. Engelbert Kaempfer defended it in an essay printed in 1712 as an undesirable but legitimate reaction to the aggressive invasion of Portugal in the 16th and early 17th centuries. During the Enlightenment, this conception was hotly debated in Europe. After the expulsion of the missionaries, Catholic writers did not give a damn about this policy. But the Enlightenment also emphasized the exchange with the world as an indispensable prerequisite for the progress of the country and humanity.

In Japan, Kaemmer's assessment was only found out late. Kaemmer's treatise had arrived in the country as an appendix to the Dutch edition of his famous Japanese book. In 1801 the interpreter Shizuki Tadao Kaempfer's text translated into Japanese and condensed the long, almost untranslatable title into the word sakoku-ron ( treatise on land closure ) he had invented . In this way, Kaempfer became the father of a key term in later descriptions of the Edo period . Shizuki's translation met with interest; his translation was copied many times, but the printed edition, which appeared in 1850, was immediately banned. Until the country opened up, Shizuki's text had no direct impact on decision-makers in Edo.

During the Meiji period , there were lively discussions in the newly established historical scholarship as well as in society in general about the assessment of the preceding Edo period, especially on the question of whether it was beneficial or harmful for Japan (sontoku ron). During this phase the term sakoku became widely used. However, it did not establish itself in Japanese historiography until the beginning of the 20th century and was incorporated into the general image of Japan through school books. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Kaemmer's description only partially applied to the actual situation in Japan. However, with increasing interest on the Russian, British and American sides in opening up the country, Japanese politicians adopted a consciously isolationist political line at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1825 the order was issued to prevent foreign ships from landing by force. However, it was only practiced once, in 1838, and abolished again after the Opium War in 1842.

A Chinese Junk Wood Block Print (1644/48)

In fact, the land closure was a selective land opening that was by no means unusual in early modern East Asia . After pirates and western powers threatened maritime trade in the western Pacific region in the 16th century, Japan and Korea restricted overseas trade almost simultaneously, and China only opened the port of Canton to European seafarers.

Foreign trade

There were also no official trade relations between Japan and China. The junks arriving in Nagasaki were operated by Chinese merchants and Southeast Asian port cities on a private initiative. The ship's crews were quartered in a closed Chinese quarter ( Tōjinyashiki ) during their stay . Trade with Europe took place on Dejima via the Dutch. The fiefdom ( han ) Tsushima - Fuchū traded with Korea through a branch ( wakan , Korean waekwan ) near the Korean port of Busan . The Satsuma fief , which annexed several islands of the Ryūkyū kingdom in 1609 , continued to maintain indirect trade relations with China and Southeast Asia through the pro forma independent part. The Matsumae fiefdom on the southwestern tip of the island of Ezo traded with the Ainu tribes that did not belong to Japan and indirectly with Northeast Asia via them.

The protection of the coasts of the archipelago was left to the neighboring fiefs, and the government only intervened directly in the event of special incidents. Smuggling and clandestine bartering at sea were, as far as one can tell from the sources, particularly widespread in the area around Kyushu. In Nagasaki, too, the bans were constantly ignored, despite all threats of punishment. At the diplomatic level, there was little activity in Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries. For a new Shogun to take office , the Korean royal court sent an embassy to Edo . The Japanese side interpreted this, following the Chinese model, as a tribute trip, while the Koreans saw their undertaking as an inspection trip. The Hofreisen the Dutchman it was up to the takeover of the East India Company of the Netherlands State actually only about relationships of a corporation to Japan. But the heads ( opperhoofden ) of the Dejima branch moving to Edo were treated as quasi-envoy. The status of the representatives of the Ryūkyū kingdom, as well as the Ainu , who occasionally arrived in Edo , was not even enough for access to the audience hall.

Korea and Japan often exchanged shipwrecked people who had been thrown to their shores. The handling of these problems was one of the tasks of the governor of Nagasaki and the fiefdom of Tsushima, which handled the handover via the Japanese branch in Busan . Such an exchange has also taken place with Russia and other European countries since the end of the 18th century.

Critical revision

After the establishment of the term sakoku in school textbooks during the first half of the 20th century, the notion of a "closure" of the country established itself in both the Japanese self-portrait and the image of many foreign historians. With the advances in the exploration of the Japanese "peripheral areas" Ezo (today Hokkaidō), Ryūkyū and Tsushima, however, doubts about this concept arose during the 1970s, which has been vigorously revised since the 1990s. At least among historians, the concept of “four openings” ( 四 の 口 , yotsu no kuchi , literally four mouths) - Matsumae, Tsushima, Nagasaki, Satsuma / Ryūkyū - is widely accepted. Instead of the term sakoku , the term kaikin ( 海禁 , “maritime graduation”), taken from Chinese, is becoming more and more widespread - also to point out the similarities to the foreign policy of China and Korea at the time.

literature

  • Michael S. Laver: The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony . Cambria Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-60497-738-7 .
  • Akihide Oshima: Sakoku to iu Gensetsu . Minerva Publisher, Kyoto 2009 (Original title: 大 島 明 秀 「鎖 国」 と い う 言 説: ケ ン ペ ル 著 ・ 志 筑 忠雄 訳 『鎖 国 論』 』の 受 容 史」 ミ ネ ル ヴ ァ 書房 .).
  • Noel Perrin: No more firearms. Japan's return to the sword 1543–1879 . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-608-91718-7 .
  • Ronald P. Toby: State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1984.
  • Reinhard Zöllner: Locked against knowledge - What Japan learned about itself from Kaempfer . In: Sabine Klocke-Daffa, Jürgen Scheffler, Gisela Wilbertz (eds.): Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716) and the cultural encounter between Europe and Asia (=  Lippische Studien ). tape 18 . Lemgo 2003.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. In Japanese and Western historiography of the 20th century, these edicts were presented as "land closure edicts" ( 鎖 国 令 , sakoku-rei ). The term sakoku is not found on any 17th century document. It was only created in 1801.
  2. ^ Kobata, Atsushi: Production and Uses of Gold and Silver in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan. In: The Economic History Review . New Series, 18: 2, 1965, pp. 245-266.
  3. Michel, Wolfgang: Japanese Acupuncture and Moxibustion in Europe from the 16th to 18th Centuries. In: Journal of the Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion (JJSAM), Vol. 61 (2011), No. 2, pp. 42-55 (150-163).
  4. Michel, Wolfgang: Medicine, remedies and herbalism in the Euro-Japanese cultural exchange of the 17th century. HORIN - Comparative Studies on Japanese Culture. No. 16, 2009, pp. 19-34.
  5. Engelbert Kaempfer: Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum fasciculi 5. Meyer, Lemgo 1712, pp. 478-502 (Regnum Japoniae optima ratione, ab egressu civium, & exterarum gentium ingressu & communione, clausum).
  6. Peter Kapitza: Engelbert Kaempfer and the European Enlightenment. In memory of the Lemgo traveler on the occasion of his 350th birthday on September 16, 2001 . Iudicum Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-89129-991-5
  7. Engelbert Kaempfer: De beschryving van Japan . 1729 and 1733.
  8. Kurosawa Okinamaro: Ijin Kyofu-to . 1850 (黒 沢 翁 満 『異 人 恐怖 伝』 嘉 永 3 年)
  9. Oshima (2009)
  10. Toby (1984)