The Tokugawa Shogunate WHAP/Napp

The Tokugawa Shogunate WHAP/Napp

“As in China, the early European influences on Japan were both economic and religious. Roman Catholicism appeared with the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506-52), who arrived in 1549. Like Matteo Ricci in China, Xavier adapted to local cultural practices in dress, food, residence, and, of course, language. For their religious ideas, their culture, and trade, Europeans were at first warmly welcomed. Japan’s shogun, or chief military administrator, Oda Nobunaga (1534-82), encouraged the Jesuits in their missionary work, and even after Nobunaga’s assassination, Christianity found a foothold in Japan. As in China, converts numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and they were mostly from among the Japanese elites. (Among the European contributions to Japanese everyday life were tobacco, bread, playing cards, and deep-fat frying.)

The Japanese government became apprehensive about so large a group of elite converts. There had been early signs of the change in policy. In 1597, after a Spanish ship captain boasted of the power of his king, and after Spain had colonized Manila making that power more blatant, the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi crucified six Franciscan missionaries and eighteen Japanese converts. In 1606 Christianity was outlawed, and in 1614 the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, began to expel all Christian missionaries. Three thousand Japanese Christians were murdered. In 1623 the British left Japan; in 1624 the Spanish were expelled; in 1630 Japanese were forbidden to travel overseas. In 1637-8, in reaction to a revolt that was more a rural economic protest than a religious uprising, 37,000 Christians were killed. The Portuguese were expelled. Only a small contingent of Dutch traders was permitted to remain, confined to Deshima Island off Nagasaki. A limited number of Chinese ships continued to visit Japan each year and some diplomatic contact with Korea continued, but Japan chose to live largely in isolation.

As in China, the suppression of contact with outsiders did not cripple Japan. Its process of political consolidation continued under the three shoguns of the Tokugawa family, from the 1600 battle of Sekigahara until 1651. The country was unified and peaceful. Privately held guns were virtually banned. Agriculture prospered as the area of land under cultivation doubled, and the production of cash crops, such as indigo, tobacco (from the New World), sugar cane, and mulberry leaves as food for silk worms, increased. The population almost doubled, from 18 million in 1600 to 30 million by the mid-1700s, at which point it stabilized temporarily.” ~ The World’s History

1. What became of the Christian community in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate? (A) Christians were restricted to a few carefully controlled missions.
(B) Christians were brutally persecuted and driven into secrecy.
(C) Christianity merged with Buddhism and Shintoism into a new syncretic religion.
(D) Japanese Christians continued to worship but lost support after European trade was restricted.
E) None of these answers is correct. / 2. What became of the Christian community in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate?
(A) Christians were restricted to a few carefully controlled missions.
(B) Christians were brutally persecuted and driven into secrecy.
(C) Christianity merged with Buddhism and Shintoism into a new syncretic religion.
(D) Japanese Christians continued to worship but lost support after European trade was restricted.
(E) None of these answers is correct.
Key Words/
Questions / I. Increasing Decentralization
A. During 1200s and 1300s, the Kamakura (1185-1333) and
Ashikaga (1336-1573) shogunates preserved order
B. Decentralization began to occur during the Ashikaga shoguante
II. Onin War
A. Civil conflict called Onin War broke out in 1467 and lasted till 1477
B. For next 100 years, Japan experienced “Era of Independent Lords”
III. Reunification of Japan
A. Lasted from 1560 to 1615: unification was brought about by three men
B. Oda Nobunaga used gunpowder weapons but assassinated
C. Then Toyotomi Hideyoshi but not a system that survived his death
D. Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600 defeated his rivals at battle of Sekigahara
E. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed himself shogun
1. Ruled in name of emperor – cloistered and powerless in Kyoto
(formerly Heian)
IV. The Great Peace
A. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted from 1603 to 1868
B. Known as the Great Peace
C. Ieyasu centralized country; established a new capital at Edo [ Tokyo]
D. Peace came at the price of dictatorship and increased social stratification
E. Almost impossible for a person to move from one class to another
F. Rulers maintained a monopoly on gunpowder technology
V. Women in Tokugawa Japan
A. In samurai class, wives had to obey husbands or face death
B. In lower classes, gender relations were more egalitarian
VI. Isolationism or Act of Seclusion
A. Sealed Japan off from the rest of the world as much as they could
B. Spanish/Portuguese traded and converted many Japanese to Christianity
C. Hostility to Christianity and fear of foreign political and economic
influence were behind Tokugawa’s decision to close off country in 1649
D. Dutch and Chinese were allowed entry only into one city, Nagasaki
VII. Accomplishments of Tokugawa
A. Restored order and kept the peace: population grew rapidly
B. Rice and grain production more than doubled between 1600 and 1720
C. Highly urbanized (Edo was one of world’s largest cities)
D. Merchant class became wealthy (exception to rule of social rigidity)
E. Wood-block print came into its own as an art form
VIII.Decline
A. Over late 1700s and early 1800s, partially modernized
B. Scientific techniques applied to farming – more food/fewer farmers
C. National infrastructure –roads, canals, and ports – began to emerge
D. In 1853, American gunships appeared: Commodore Matthew Perry
“asking” to open Japan to trade
E. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 began Japan’s modern age
F. Emperor Meiji abolished feudalism: modernization and industrialization
1. The isolationism of the Tokugawa government included
(A) Forbidding Japanese from going abroad
(B) Forbidding Chinese and Dutch merchants from trading at Nagasaki
(C) Forbidding scholars of neo-Confucianism from teaching in Japan
(D) Banning all foreign religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism
(E) All of the above
2. Under the shogunates of Japan
(A) Real power still rested with the emperor
(B) Power rested with Buddhist monks
(C) The emperor’s power was largely symbolic
(D) The shoguns were the religious priests
3. Which of the following was not a policy of the new Meiji government?
(A) Establishing a system of nationally appoint prefects
(B) Expanding state power
(C) Abolition of feudalism
(D) Reinforcing the daimyos
4. Tokugawa Ieyasu ruled Japan as
(A) Hereditary emperor.
(B) A temporary military ruler in support of the emperor.
(C) The elected lord of the daimyo.
(D) A powerful regional warlord.
5. In order to control the daimyo and maintain political stability, the Tokugawa bakufu
(A) Obliged the daimyo to live in the capital on alternate years.
(B) Limited contacts between individual daimyo.
(C) Limited contacts between the daimyo and the outside world.
(D) Did all of these: A, B, and C
(E) None of these answers is correct. / 6. What became of the Christian community in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate?
(A) Christians were restricted to a few carefully controlled missions.
(B) Christians were brutally persecuted and driven into secrecy.
(C) Christianity merged with Buddhism and Shintoism into a new syncretic religion.
(D) Japanese Christians continued to worship but lost support after European trade was restricted.
(E) None of the above
7. Which of the following statements concerning the Tokugawa Shogunate in the nineteenth century is most accurate?
(A) By the nineteenth century, the Tokugawa were able to dispense with the feudal organization of earlier Japan.
(B) Increasingly the Shogunate depended on its long-standing alliances with Western powers to maintain its dominance.
(C) The Shogunate bureaucracy had been opened to talented commoners.
(D) The Shogunate continued to combine a central bureaucracy with semi-feudal alliances with regional daimyos and the samurai.
8. During the eighteenth century, which of the following reigned, but did not rule?
(A) The Ottoman sultan
(B) The king of France
(C) The Chinese emperor
(D) The Japanese emperor
(E) The Russian tsar
9. “Dutch learning” in Tokugawa Japan referred to
(A) Medical research.
(B) The practice of sending Japanese students to Holland to study.
(C) The study of Dutch by a small number of Japanese scholars to gain knowledge of the outside world.
(D) None of these answers is correct.

“During the 16thcentury, an innovative and fierce leader, Nobunaga, one of the first daimyos to make extensiveuse of firearms, rose to the forefront among the contesting lords. He deposed the last Ashikagashogun in 1573 but was killed in 1582 before finishing his conquests. Nobunaga’s general,Toyotomo Hideyoshi, continued the struggle and became master of Japan by 1590. Hideyoshithen launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea. He died in 1598. Tokugawa Ieyasu won outin the ensuing contest for succession. In 1603, the emperor appointed him shogun. TheTokugawas continued in power for two and a half centuries. Ieyasu, who ruled from Edo(Tokyo), directly controlled central Honshu and placed the remaining daimyos under hisauthority. Outlying daimyos, over time, alsowere brought under Tokugawa rule. The longperiod of civil wars had ended and political unity was restored.

European traders and missionaries had visited Japan inincreasing numbers since 1543. The traders exchanged Asian and European goods, the latterincluding firearms, clocks, and printing presses, for Japanese silver, copper, and artisan products. The firearms, which the Japanese soon manufactured themselves, revolutionized local warfare. Roman Catholic missionaries arrived during Nobunaga’s campaigns. He protected them as acounterforce to his Buddhist opponents. The Jesuits, by the 1580s, claimed hundreds ofthousands of converts. Hideyoshi was less tolerant of Christianity. The Buddhists had beencrushed, and he feared that converts would give primary loyalty to their religion. Hideyoshi alsofeared that Europeans might try to conquer Japan.

Official measures to restrict foreign influence were orderedfrom the late 1580s. Christian missionaries were ordered to leave; persecution of Christians wasunder way during the middle of the 1590s. Christianity was officially banned in 1614. Continued persecution provoked unsuccessful rebellions and drove the few remaining Christiansunderground. Ieyasu and his successors broadened the campaign to isolate Japan from outsideinfluences. From 1616, merchants were confined to a few cities; from 1630, Japanese shipscould not sail overseas. By the 1640s, only Dutch and Chinese ships visited Japan to trade atDeshima Island. Western books were banned. The retreat into isolation was almost total by the

middle of the 17th century. The Tokugawa continued expanding their authority. During the

18th century, the revival of neo-Confucian philosophy that had flourished under the early Tokugawas gave way to a ‘School of National Learning’ based on indigenous culture. Some ofthe elite, in strong contrast to the Chinese scholar-gentry, continued to follow with avid interestWestern developments through the Dutch at Deshima.” ~World Civilizations

Critical Thinking Questions:

1- Why did the Japanese resort to isolation as a response to European expansion? ______

2- How did the Tokugawa shoguns prevent the return of civil war in Japan? ______

______