Sakoku Isolationism

“Sakoku” is a Japanese word that means exactly “closing country”. In this era, nobody could go outside of the country neither other countries couldn’t come into the country. Sakoku was the best option and the way that Japanese Shogun had because Japan wasn’t trying to make the country of Japan bigger.

Sakoku is well known as isolationism in other countries because of the different government of European countries. When Japan closed the country, European countries were in the “Age of Exploration” which means that every country wanted to have more wealth, territories and slaves. But Japan didn’t want to be a territory of those country so Japan decided to be independent from all other countries. So for the Japanese “sakoku” meant “independence” not “isolationism”. Before the Edo era, Japan never had no

This arrival of the ship was shocking for the people in Japan because they realizes how much they were under developed just by looking at the ship. The owner and the man who brought the kurofune was called Matthew Perry who was a commodore of the United States Navy.

He wanted Japan to open the country because American needed a commercial hub to trade with other countries in Asia.

After seeing the power of the western country, Japanese government decided to open the country. So Tokugawa gave all the power back to the Emperor and the lords which were almost 300, gave back their all power. This was called “Meiji-Ishin” which means Meiji Restoration. In this era, Japan tried to get as open as possible to catch up to the western countries. Japan invited a lot of teachers, farmers, doctors, and directors of training soldiers. This changed a lot of Japanese people’s lifestyles.

In Meiji Restoration Japan decided to all the people from all the classes to be equal except the emperor. This meant that shogunates and farmers became into the same