A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (31 page)

By 1639 all westerners had been expelled or had left voluntarily, with the exception of the Dutch, who were allowed only on the small island of Deshima in Nagasaki Harbour.
²¹
Along with the Chinese and Koreans, they were the only foreigners formally allowed to trade with Japan as it effectively withdrew from the world for the next two centuries. This was the period later described as the
sakoku jidai
, or ‘closed country period’.

It was not just a case of foreigners being banned entry into Japan, for the sh
gunate seemed to reject almost any form of ‘foreignness’. From 1635, with very few exceptions, Japanese were not allowed to travel overseas, and those Japanese who were overseas at the time – who numbered in the tens of thousands, mostly in southeast Asia – were banned from returning on pain of death.
²²
The building of large vessels capable of ocean travel had also been banned by that stage. Ships authorised for coastal trading had to display an official sh
gunate seal.
²³

The arrival of westerners had helped generate a national consciousness in Japan,
²⁴
aided by the process of reunification that followed shortly afterwards. It was during the 1600s that the Ry
ky
Islands to the south and Hokkaid
to the north began to be incorporated into the nation, giving it a geo-political identity very close to present-day Japan. Japanese world-maps of the time, in another example of adaptation from the Chinese, show Japan – not China – as the centre of the world.
²⁵
Clearly, for the time being at least, Tokugawa Japan was not interested in too much involvement with the lesser nations of its world. A closed country was also a much safer country for its Tokugawa rulers.

3.2   Samurai and Ethics

As the country entered an enduring phase of stability and peace, without even any real foreign threat, warriors became superfluous. There were a number of peasant uprisings to put down, their lords’ honour to uphold,
and a bit of policing, but little work for real warriors. Instead, they became bureaucrats and administrators. Their battles became mere paper wars.

These men who occupied the top class in the social order were acutely embarrassed by their almost parasitic life. They seized the least chance for real action to prove their valour, and they went to almost absurd lengths to justify their existence. As a rather ironic result, it was during this age of the redundant samurai that some of the clearest expressions of the samurai ideal,
bushid
(‘way of the warrior’), were to emerge.

Every Japanese knows the story of the Forty-Seven R
nin. A
r
nin
(wanderer) was a samurai made masterless either by dismissal or by the execution or demotion of his lord. There were quite a few of them in Tokugawa Japan who roamed the countryside causing trouble for villagers and disquiet for the authorities. The forty-seven in question, however, are seen as the embodiment of samurai virtue.

In 1701 their lord, Asano Naganori (1665–1701) of Ak
in Harima (Hy
go Prefecture) had been insulted by Kira Yoshinaka (1641–1703), the sh
gun’s chief of protocol. Asano had drawn his sword in the sh
gun’s castle – a capital offence. He was made to commit
seppuku
, and his domain was confiscated from his family. Forty-seven of his now masterless samurai retainers vowed to avenge his death by killing Kira. They hid their intent for two years, pretending to lead a life of dissipation, then attacked and killed Kira in an unguarded moment, placing his severed head on their lord’s grave.