Sakoku In Japan

Imagining a country that is totally closed off from all exterior surroundings is very difficult do, as there are very few countries that even have the resources for such an endeavor. This is the perceived vision of what Japan was like during the Tokugawa period, where the Shoguns employed an idea of Sakoku in Japan. But what does Sakoku mean? There is a literal translation of closing down the country, but the foreign relations policy did not follow this word for word translation . Along with the Tokugawa Edict, the Shoguns are marked in history for their impressive political stability, but their stability came from their ability to see past the letter of the law. But did the edict put into place by the Tokugawa family really hurt more than …show more content…
These daimyos were very wealthy, and powerful, but were just below the Tokugawa family in social class ranking. Normally, a family with full samurai protection would not worry about a bunch of rich proprietors, but in the case of the daimyos, they were much more than just aristocrats. The daimyos were very close with Europeans, and that meant that they were close to having the European military technology . Guns and other powerful projectile weapons could prove troublesome for sword wielding samurais. In order for the Tokugawa family to stay in power, they had to be sure to keep the daimyos from getting the military power from the Europeans, keeping any coup d’état from occurring …show more content…
Even though the Tokugawa family wanted to be sure that their hegemony was kept in place, they realized that they would be unable to just shut the entire world out and not know what was going on in China and in Europe . This led them to create a manufactured island off the coast of Nagasaki, where Dutch and Chinese ships were allowed to trade (although the trade was heavily regulated). The Dutch also were allowed to come to the island in order to report to the Japanese government on what was going on in the rest of the world . This is the first issue with Sakoku, the fact that the Japanese did not even totally shut out the rest of the world shows that they knew that they would be unable to survive totally on their own. With that kind of economic boom, it would not be possible to keep running at the level that they were without reaching out to the rest of the