Foreign Influences on Japan During Tokugawa Shoguns

FOREIGN INFLUENCES ON JAPAN UNDER THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNS

This research paper summarizes and examines the sources of foreign influence on Japan during three periods of Tokugawa rule, 1603-1720, 1720-1830 and 1830-1868. All Japanese names have been Anglicized, thus shogun, not shogun. The thesis of this essay is that foreign influences survived in Japan, even during the period of eighty years following the adoption of the Exclusion Policy in 1639, and that thereafter, despite the continued strict but varying enforcement of the Exclusion Policy, those influences, primarily of Western origin, exerted a growing attraction in certain Japanese intellectual and ruling circles, and were an important factor leading to the eventual collapse of Tokugawa rule and the Meiji restoration of 1868.

Conditions Leading to the Policy of Exclusion

Throughout its history and until the first shipwrecked Portuguese sailors landed on its shores in 1543, Japan, as an island nation, had largely been insulated from disruptive foreign influences, except for a period during the 13th century when it was threatened with seaborne invasions from China and later reactions to the political activities in Japan of Buddhist monks. Japan had, nevertheless, been greatly influenced by Chinese culture, and indirectly and to a lesser extent, by Indian religion. Those enormous contributions were assimilated and adapted successfully by Japan to meet its unique conditions and needs. These foreign cultural infusion

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ation" (1978, p. 42). The Dutch were selected as Japan's sole window to the West in part because they had provided arms and ships to the shogun's forces during the Shimbara revolt, but primarily because they were willing to confine themselves to trade and to, as a 1769 Indonesian play said, "for Gain their God on Deshima forsake" (Keene, 1969, p. 7). Under the terms of the Policy of Exclusion, the Dutch were not allowed to visit other parts of Japan, except for their annual trip to meet the central authorities in Tokyo where they presented gifts, reported on any pertinent foreign developments, especially anything to do with Christianity, foreign invasion plans and foreign arms and generally paid obeisance. According to Nish, "Dutch traders were at intervals required to perform the 'fumi-e' (trampling on the image of Christ)" (1968, p. 61). Nevertheless, unofficial contacts were maintained with some Dutch merchants, doctors and ship's officers which generally occurred through a special cadre of interpreters who did double duty as spies on the Dutch. The difficult task of translating Dutch into Japanese was a formidable obstacle. Keene says that the study of the Dutch language began in the second half of the 17th century and

Category: Foreign - F