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century. After a brief introduction that situates Japan in the early modern international world, I consider the final iteration of the seventeen-article sakoku edicts (issued in 1635) in three main parts: edicts regarding Japanese travel outside the country, edicts regarding Catholicism, and edicts regarding the conduct of foreign trade in Japan. I then address three other formative events that played a role in shaping Japanese foreign policy: the expulsion of the Portuguese after the Shimabara Rebellion, the expulsion of Japanese women who had children with European men, and the removal of the Dutch to the man-made island of Deshima.
The edicts that I have chosen to translate and elaborate upon are by no means an exhaustive list of edicts concerning foreigners or foreign trade, but they do represent a final version of the sakoku edicts that essentially provided the framework for Japan's relations with Europe and China for the balance of the Edo period. I also briefly touch upon the exceptions to this framework in the following pages. For example, when the final sakoku edicts were issued in 1635, the Portuguese were still allowed to trade in Japan, and the Dutch were still permitted to maintain a relatively free commercial and social existence at Hirado. Because the Portuguese were expelled and the Dutch were transferred to Deshima soon after the edicts were promulgated, I have devoted separate chapters to each of these developments. Similarly, throughout the text I have tried as much as possible to trace the evolution of several of the edicts, most notably the evolving Japanese response to Catholicism and the general movement toward restricting European and Chinese trade, first to the island of Kyushu and then later to the single port of Nagasaki. It is my hope that this approach will yield a comprehensive understanding of this most formative period in Japan's early modern history.
When I began writing this book, I was primarily concerned with demonstrating that Japan's response to foreign trade was not a monolithic piece of legislation that abruptly changed the way the country dealt with the East Asian world and, more broadly, Europe. Rather, the policy that became known as sakoku was an evolving process that began with specific reactions to particular historical stimuli. Japan's relationship with Catholicism and the Catholic missionaries is a case in point.