Japan's Sakoku Period
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2013
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Japan's Sakoku period, two centuries when the country deliberately isolated itself from the Western world. Sakoku began with a series of edicts in the 1630s which restricted the rights of Japanese to leave their country and expelled most of the Europeans living there. For the next two hundred years, Dutch traders were the only Westerners free to live in Japan. It was not until 1858 and the gunboat diplomacy of the American Commodore Matthew Perry that Japan's international isolation finally ended. Although historians used to think of Japan as completely isolated from external influence during this period, recent scholarship suggests that Japanese society was far less isolated from European ideas during this period than previously thought.
With:
Richard Bowring Emeritus Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge
Andrew Cobbing Associate Professor of History at the University of Nottingham
Rebekah Clements Research Fellow of Queens' College and Research Associate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:45.9 | the program. Hello the third edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 17, contains a long article about Japan which states, quote, |
| 0:56.7 | the natives are prohibited from going out of their country and all foreigners are excluded |
| 1:01.4 | from an open and free trade. The Dutch and Chinese are shut up |
| 1:04.9 | whilst they remain there and a most strict watch is set upon them, insomuch that they are no |
| 1:09.9 | better than prisoners. And when these words were first published, Japan had been effectively closed to foreigners |
| 1:15.8 | for more than 150 years. |
| 1:18.0 | In the early 17th century, the country's rulers began a policy known as Sarkoku, under which Westerners were banned from entering Japan |
| 1:24.9 | while their country's own people weren't allowed to leave. |
| 1:28.1 | This period of self-imposed isolation continued for over two centuries until the arrival of an American Navy ship in 1854. |
| 1:35.6 | Sarkoku had a major consequences for Japanese society of where the country had been perceived |
| 1:40.9 | both at home and abroad. With me to discuss Japan's Saacoco period |
| 1:45.1 | are Richard Bowering, emeritus professor of Japanese studies |
| 1:48.8 | at the University of Cambridge. |
| 1:50.9 | Andrew Cobing, associate professor of History at the University of Nottingham, and Rebecca |
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