Tokugawa Japan closes itself
Two and a half centuries of internal peace under strictly controlled foreign contact.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 36 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes shogun in 1603 after unifying a country that had been at war for a century. From the 1630s the regime expels missionaries, bans Christianity, forbids Japanese from leaving and restricts foreign trade to a Dutch post on an artificial island at Nagasaki and limited Chinese and Korean contact. The result is 250 years without significant war, rapid urban growth, high literacy, and the woodblock print culture of Edo.