The country was filled with friars of various orders; their conduct and habits were not always exemplary, and they were not politic in making prominent their devotion to the Pope. Their claim of a superior obedience to a foreign potentate and the visit of the Japanese embassy to Rome alarmed the imperial authorities, and orders were issued for a strict enforcement of the edict. This caused a rebellion of the native Christians, which was with great difficulty suppressed. Incensed at these events, the Shogun issued a second edict in 1637, expelling, not only the missionaries, but all foreigners, prohibiting their entrance into the country, and forbidding the Japanese to go abroad. In the language of the Dutch historian of the period, "Japan was shut up." By 1639 not a single Portuguese or Spaniard—merchant or missionary—remained in the country, and it was supposed that every native Christian had recanted or been slaughtered. Only the Dutch, not of the "evil sect," were permitted to remain, and they were confined to the little island of Deshima in the harbor of Nagasaki. Thenceforward for more than two centuries the liberal policy of foreign intercourse was reversed, and only through this small Dutch factory did the Japanese government and people communicate with the outside world.[1]
Merchants of all nationalities for a century had found
- ↑ 1 History of Japan, Kaempfer, passim; 3 Histoire du Japon, Charlevoix; Letters of William Adams. A full discussion of the accounts of the persecution, by Kaempfer (Protestant) and Charlevoix (Catholic), will be found in the preface to Memorials of Japan, already cited. The Mikado's Empire, by W. E. Griffis, New York, 1876, pp. 248–259.
