Was Japan Really Closed? Sakoku as a Meiji Story

"The Edo period was some two hundred years of seclusion, until Commodore Perry's Black Ships suddenly arrived and a startling new age began." This story, told and spread so widely, is a view that was shaped after Meiji, and it cannot be taken as it stands.

Behind its making lay the political dynamics of the people of the Choshu domain, who formed the core of the new Meiji government. The overthrow of the shogunate, the essence of the Meiji Restoration, was a military change of regime, and in effect the Tokugawa shogun's leadership passed to the new government. The advanced system of rule formed in the Edo period was carried over as it was, and the story that gave the impression of a new age became the engine that supported the regime.

The new government therefore had to show people that it was different from the Tokugawa government of the Edo period, and what we would call national branding was carried out: "Edo period = seclusion," "Meiji period = opening of the country." Because the Meiji government was founded by a military change of regime, it had to place its starting point within a story and so stabilize its rule.

The seclusion system, moreover, is too much beautified in the overall tone of the debate. As Shihei Hayashi (1738–1793) argued well before the Black Ships, after surveying in person, the maritime defense of the archipelago was full of gaps, and it is hard to suppose that there was no traffic through these gaps with the peoples of China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the north who had come to Japan since ancient times. The shogunate, to maintain its system, kept such matters out of sight, so it is natural that the whole picture does not appear in historical sources except in part. Bohai envoys came repeatedly from the state of Bohai to the Sea of Japan side from the eighth to the tenth century, and Japan sent its own, and these old sea routes were never cut, even in the age of seclusion. Seclusion was in effect a system about relations with a few countries such as Portugal, and it is more natural to think that the movements of people who had long traded by sea with places across the archipelago kept flowing, in people, goods, and information. The limits of the Edo shogunate's seclusion are plain from the movements of people like Shihei Hayashi and Hikokuro Takayama (1747–1793), who surveyed all Japan and put forward visionary views.

Why, then, do so many people still take this simplified view as a premise when discussing Japan? First, because opportunities to survey Japan on foot are limited. I keep moving to survey places across Japan and clarify the plural reality from a wide range of angles, and I come to understand deeply that Japan's image as an island nation is not "an island nation shut in by the sea" but in fact "an island nation open to the sea" (without forgetting both directions).

Modern Japan descends from the Meiji era, when the country opened, after the 265 years of the Edo period. The Edo period is strongly associated with "sakoku," the closing of the country, but the closing did not hold across the whole age. The policy actually began and ended within a span of 215 years, from 1639 to 1854.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 rose against the Tokugawa house and the shogunate it headed, which had carried out that policy, condemning them as "feudal" and proclaiming a new age.

At its core the Restoration was a military coup that did not shrink from terrorism, but in Japan this reading was for a long time something one must never say aloud. School education instead praises the Restoration as a landmark event that leads to modern Japan. Why?

This rebellion served as the trigger for the shogunate to decisively harden its policy. Sakoku was not born out of an innate Japanese impulse to sever foreign trade or ties; it was erected piece by piece out of the authorities' wariness of an overseas apparatus where proselytization and commerce were inextricably bound. Thus, in 1639, relations with Portugal—where trade and faith were intertwined—were severed, Portuguese vessels were barred from entering Japanese waters, and the complete suppression of Christian missions established the sakoku framework. In the end, among all Western nations, only the Netherlands retained formal trade ties with Japan.

Rangaku was passed down through families such as the Sugita, Katsuragawa, and Udagawa lines, who also devoted themselves to compiling comprehensive Dutch-Japanese dictionaries. Through this intellectual transmission, the broad body of Western knowledge that grew out of Dutch studies became woven directly into Japan’s push toward modernization in the closing days of the shogunate. Even under the constraints of sakoku, Western learning accumulated steadily through the single portal of the Netherlands, eventually opening new horizons for Japanese culture. That this profound encounter between East and West unfolded precisely during an era remembered for its isolation is a historical reality that invites all of us to pause and reflect anew.