We must now leap several centuries to about 1550, when the first
Western traders and missionaries reached Japan.
The Japan of 1550 differed greatly from the Japan of the Fujiwara era
we left behind us five or six centuries earlier. The Fujiwara power
had passed away in the twelfth century. Its civilian government had
grown weak. It could not even keep the peace. As disorder grew in
the provinces, great independent lords surrounded themselves with
military retainers on their private estates. A feudal society gradually
emerged. In 1185 one of these feudal lords established his supremacy
over the others, and soon obtained Imperial appointment as “Shogun,”
or Generalissimo. The Emperor’s court still carried on at Kyoto, but
political control passed increasingly to the Shoguns, who became
military dictators. A military aristocracy--but a rapidly shifting
one--dominated Japan. As new feudal lords grew in strength, they would
challenge the Shogun’s authority and bitter civil wars would follow.
Strife and disorder amounting to anarchy marked the century which
preceded 1550.
Then the trend was reversed. By 1590, through the work of three great
leaders--Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu--the country was unified
again. In the brief period that followed--say, until 1625--Japan was
confronted with a fateful question. Should it embark on a program
of military and commercial expansion, similar to that which Western
nations were just entering upon? For a time it seemed that the answer
might be “yes.” In the end, it was “no.” And that “no” changed the
whole course of Far Eastern and perhaps world history. In 1603 Ieyasu
established the Tokugawa Shogunate, destined to rule Japan for more
than 250 years. After 1616, under his successors, the seclusion policy
was gradually adopted, and Japan was practically isolated from the
outside world.
Was this choice inevitable? We cannot really tell. We do know that in
the period just before she barred her door Japan was reaching outward
toward full intercourse with the West.