How Japan Centralized Just in Time to Avoid Colonization

European encounters with Japan followed a very different course than most other interactions with other non-European societies, as Japan was able to completely repel exploitation and incursion. In the 16th century, European colonization was in full swing and Japan looked an easy target as a divided kingdom usually mired in war. It appeared early on that the same story would play out in Japan as it did in Africa, Latin America, and other victims of European imperialism: missionaries and merchants would arrive in a divided or weak society, and soon enough a pretext would be found to invade. However, the arrival of Europeans coincided with the establishment of a strong central authority in Japan. The government’s rightful unnerve towards Europeans would lead to a closed-door policy which lasted more than two centuries and shaped life and customs throughout the Edo period.

The first interaction between Europeans and Japanese came in 1543, when Portuguese merchants made landfall in the south of Japan. European merchants were quickly drawn to the exorbitant, highly profitable market for Chinese and their own products, and soon were frequently trading in Nagasaki and Kyushu. During this time, there was very little resistance or animosity towards these new traders in the markets. Japanese society was heavily fragmented, the emperor had little authority, and daimyo constantly fought. There seemed to be larger problems that powerful figures in Japan had to deal with than newcomers simply trading goods. However, in a unique situation, it was Christian missionaries who led the way in the attempted “colonization” of Japan, and it would be their actions which determined European-Japanese relations for the next century. Jesuit missionaries arrived in Kyushu in 1549 and immediately began what was almost an improbably successful conversion of Japan to Christianity. They penetrated nearly every province of Japan, managed to establish bases in Kyoto, and gained an audience with influential daimyo. With the missionaries on the verge of success, their efforts would play a part in provoking a crucial shift in Japanese society.

Japan’s era of civil war and chaos would come to an end under the hand of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who sought to create a unified Japan under his undisputed authority. In 1600, he won the battle of Sekigahara, giving him almost absolute power. Ieyasu was very intelligent and calculated in his moves to ensure absolute authority, and this included binding religion to him and his heirs’ position of shogun. The religion of Shinto, which professed absolute loyalty to the emperor and the shogun, was used extensively by the Tokugawa family to solidify their power. In order to establish his ideal society and solidify his rule in Japan, the shogun could not tolerate devotion to any other sources of authority, spiritual or temporal. This included the Jesuits and other missionaries, as well as those they had converted, whose absolute authority was the Christian God. Having likely known about previous European colonization in areas uncomfortably near to Japan, such as the Philippines, the shogunate led a crackdown on all Europeans. Anti-Christian laws began to be introduced at the turn of the 17th century, and a huge persecution was carried out in 1614. By the 1640s, little to no missionaries remained in Japan, a century of their efforts having been completely wiped out within the span of a few decades. The Japanese also took this opportunity to expel Portuguese merchants solely for their Catholic faith. The only remnants of European influence were the Dutch, who were allowed to trade and reside only in Nagasaki. The Dutch were only allowed to stay due to their Protestant faith, which they had little interest in spreading.

While European influence was small in Early Modern Japan compared to many other societies, it played an overlooked part in the centralization of Japanese society. The shogunate saw the threat Europeans, and specifically Christians, presented both practically and ideologically to their new authority. This caused, or at least influenced them to bind the Shinto religion to their authority, which was a huge cause for their long-term reign. European interaction was a direct cause for the policy of sakoku, which closed off Japan from the outside world for more than two centuries. The Tokugawa were able to see the threat European encroachment presented to Japan, and expertly used this threat to centralize and control Japan.