Decline of Nanban Exchanges
After the country was pacified and unified by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 however, Japan progressively closed itself to the outside world, mainly because of the rise of Christianity.
By 1650, except for the trade outpost of Dejima in Nagasaki, for the Netherlands, and some trade with China, foreigners were subject to the death penalty, and Christian converts were persecuted. Guns were almost completely eradicated to revert to the more "civilized" sword. Travel abroad and the building of large ships was also prohibited. Thence started a period of seclusion, peace, prosperity and mild progress known as the Edo period.
The "barbarians" would come back 250 years later strengthened by industrialization, and end Japan's isolation, with the forcible opening of Japan to trade by an American military fleet under the commandement of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854.
Read more about this topic: Nanban Trade
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