The Tokugawa Shogunate WHAP/Napp

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“As in China, the early European influences on Japan were both economic and religious. Roman Catholicism appeared with the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506-52), who arrived in 1549. Like Matteo Ricci in China, Xavier adapted to local cultural practices in dress, food, residence, and, of course, language. For their religious ideas, their culture, and trade, Europeans were at first warmly welcomed. Japan’s shogun, or chief military administrator, Oda Nobunaga (1534-82), encouraged the Jesuits in their missionary work, and even after Nobunaga’s assassination, Christianity found a foothold in Japan. As in China, converts numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and they were mostly from among the Japanese elites. (Among the European contributions to Japanese everyday life were tobacco, bread, playing cards, and deep-fat frying, which inspired the Japanese specialty of tempura.)

The Japanese government became apprehensive about so large a group of elite converts. There had been early signs of the change in policy. In 1597, after a Spanish ship captain boasted of the power of his king, and after Spain had colonized Manila making that power more blatant, the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi crucified six Franciscan missionaries and eighteen Japanese converts. In 1606 Christianity was outlawed, and in 1614 the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, began to expel all Christian missionaries. Three thousand Japanese Christians were murdered. In 1623 the British left Japan; in 1624 the Spanish were expelled; in 1630 Japanese were forbidden to travel overseas. In 1637-8, in reaction to a revolt that was more a rural economic protest than a religious uprising, 37,000 Christians were killed. The Portuguese were expelled. Only a small contingent of Dutch traders was permitted to remain, confined to Deshima Island off Nagasaki. A limited number of Chinese ships continued to visit Japan each year and some diplomatic contact with Korea continued, but Japan chose to live largely in isolation.

As in China, the suppression of contact with outsiders did not cripple Japan. Its process of political consolidation continued under the three shoguns of the Tokugawa family, from the 1600 battle of Sekigahara until 1651. The country was unified and peaceful. Privately held guns were virtually banned. Agriculture prospered as the area of land under cultivation doubled, and the production of cash crops, such as indigo, tobacco (from the New World), sugar cane, and mulberry leaves as food for silk worms, increased. The population almost doubled, from 18 million in 1600 to 30 million by the mid-1700s, at which point it stabilized temporarily.” ~ The World’s History

1-How and why were Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci effective missionaries in Asia? ______

2-Why did the Japanese government become apprehensive about Europeans? ______

3-How did the official Japanese policy towards Christians and Europeans change? ______

4-Who were the only Europeans allowed to trade with Japan? Where? ______

5-How did Japan prosper under the Tokugawa shoguns? ______

  1. Increasing Decentralization
  1. During 1200s and 1300s, shogunates – Kamakura (1185-1333) and Ashikaga (1336-1573) preserved order but decentralization occurred in late 1300s/1400s
  2. Japan was breaking down into a patchwork of independent feudal states
  1. Onin War
  1. Civil conflict called Onin War broke out in 1467 and lasted till 1477
  2. For next 100 years, Japan experienced “Era of Independent Lords”
  1. Reunification of Japan
  1. Lasted from 1560 to 1615: unification was brought about by three men
  2. First: Oda Nobunaga, one of first to use gunpowder weapons but assassinated
  3. Second: Toyotomi Hideyoshi but did not create a system that survived his death
  4. Ultimate unifier: Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600 defeated rivals at battle of Sekigahara
  5. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu appointed himself shogun
  6. Ruled in name of emperor – cloistered and powerless in Kyoto (formerly Heian)
  1. The Great Peace
  1. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted from 1603 to 1868
  2. Period known as the Great Peace
  3. Ieyasu centralized country and established a new capital at Edo [today, Tokyo]
  4. Peace came at the price of dictatorship and increased social stratification
  5. Almostimpossible for a person to move from one class to another
  6. Rulers also maintained a monopoly on gunpowder technology
  1. Women in Tokugawa Japan
  1. In samurai class, wives had to obey husbands or face death
  2. In lower classes, gender relations were more egalitarian
  1. Isolationism or Act of Seclusion
  1. Sealed Japan off from the rest of the world as much as they could
  2. Spanish and Portuguese had traded and converted many Japanese to Christianity
  3. Hostility to Christianity and fear of foreign political and economic influence were behind Tokugawa’s decision to close off country in 1649
  4. Dutch merchants were allowed entry only into one city, Nagasaki
  1. Accomplishments of Tokugawa
  1. Restored and kept the peace: population grew rapidly
  2. Rice and grain production more than doubled between 1600 and 1720
  3. Highly urbanized (Edo was one of world’s largest cities) and an elaborate network of roads and canals
  4. During 1600s and 1700s, one class that became increasingly wealthy and powerful was merchant class (exception to general rule of social rigidity)
  5. During Tokugawa era, wood-block print came into its own as an art form
  1. Decline
  1. Over late 1700s and early 1800s, partially modernized
  2. Scientific techniques were applied to farming allowing fewer people to grow more
  3. A national infrastructure – more roads, canals, and ports – began to emerge
  4. In 1853, American gunships appeared: Commodore Matthew Perry ”asking” to open Japan to trade
E. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 began Japan’s modern age
F. Emperor Meiji abolished feudalism: modernization and industrialization

1-What factors led to the Onin War in Japan? ______

2-Why was Oda Nobunaga significant in the reunification process? ______

3-What happened at the battle of Sekigahara? ______

4-Identify the dates of the Tokugawa Shogunate. ______

5-Why was the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate referred to as the Great Peace? ______

6-Where was the capital of the Tokugawa Shogunate? ______

7-How did the Tokugawa shoguns maintain peace? ______

8-What was virtually impossible for a person do within the Tokugawa class system? ______

9-Why do you think the Tokugawa shoguns made this virtually impossible? ______

10-What did the Tokugawa shoguns have a monopoly on? Why? ______

11-Describe the status of women in Tokugawa Japan. ______

12-What was the Act of Seclusion? ______

13-Why did the Tokugawa shoguns decide to close the country? ______

14-What exception did the Tokugawa shoguns make? ______

15-Why did Japan’s population double under the Tokugawa shoguns? ______

16-What class grew in wealth and power during the Tokugawa period? ______

17-Why do you think this class grew in wealth and power during this era? ______

18-What was applied to farming during the Tokugawa era? ______

19-What art form developed during the Tokugawa period? ______

20-Who was Commodore Perry? ______

21-Why did Commodore Perry arrive in Japan? ______

22-What was the Meiji Restoration? ______

23-How did the Meiji Restoration change Japan? ______

1. The isolationism of the Tokugawa government included
(A)Forbidding Japanese from going abroad
(B)Forbidding Chinese and Dutch merchants from trading at Nagasaki
(C)Forbidding scholars of neo-Confucianism from teaching in Japan
(D)Banning all foreign religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism
(E)All of the above
2. Under the shogunates of Japan
(A)Real power still rested with the emperor
(B)Power rested with Buddhist monks
(C)The emperor’s power was largely symbolic
(D)The shoguns were the religious priests
3. Which of the following was not a policy of the new Meiji government?
(A)Establishing a system of nationally appoint prefects
(B)Expanding state power
(C)Abolition of feudalism
(D)Reinforcing the daimyos
4. Tokugawa Ieyasu ruled Japan as
(A)Hereditary emperor.
(B)A temporary military ruler in support of the emperor.
(C)The elected lord of the daimyo.
(D) A powerful regional warlord. / 5. What became of the Christian community in Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate?
(A)Christians were restricted to a few carefully controlled missions.
(B)Christians were brutally persecuted and driven into secrecy.
(C)Christianity merged with Buddhism and Shintoism into a new syncretic religion.
(D)Japanese Christians continued to worship but lost support after European trade was restricted.
(E)None of the above
6. Which of the following statements concerning the Tokugawa Shogunate in the nineteenth century is most accurate?
(A)By the nineteenth century, the Tokugawa were able to dispense with the feudal organization of earlier Japan.
(B)Increasingly the Shogunate depended on its long-standing alliances with Western powers to maintain its dominance.
(C)The Shogunate bureaucracy had been opened to talented commoners.
(D)The Shogunate continued to combine a central bureaucracy with semi-feudal alliances with regional daimyos and the samurai.
7. During the eighteenth century, which of the following reigned, but did not rule?
(A) The Ottoman sultan
(B) The king of France
(C) The Chinese emperor
(D) The Japanese emperor
(E) The Russian tsar

Thesis Practice: Change over Time

Analyze political and economic changes and continuities in Japan from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration.

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