(Note-I have wondered why Portuguese is the only European nationality that uses the suffix -ese to denote nationality. Other Europeans use -ish, such as Spanish, British, Irish, Polish. Some Europeans use -an, such as Belgian, German, Norwegian and, Italian. Is this somehow a result of Portugal being the first Europeans to have extensive contact with the Japanese)?
There were also many Chinese traders in Nagasaki, and there is still a Chinatown in the city:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki_Chinatown#/media/File:Chinatown_Nagasaki_Japan01s5.jpg
But this was the imperial era and Japan was also wary of possible western plans to make it into a colony. Laws, known as Sakoku, were made which strictly limited foreign entry into Japan. A person who left Japan could never return, without permission of the Tokugawa Shogunate. But Japan also wanted some trade, and to keep up with progress in the outside world, and Nagasaki became it's "window on the world".
An artificial island was created in Nagasaki, known as Dejima, and trading was done from there. Only ships from China, Korea and, the Netherlands were allowed to trade.To discourage any imperial designs that westerners may have had, British, French, Spanish, Portuguese or, Russian ships were not allowed to land. It was largely Dutch books that brought knowledge of the outside world to Japan.
Dejima is a section of Nagasaki today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima#/media/File:Nagasaki_Dejima_C1771.jpg
Trade was not done strictly at Nagasaki, and Japan sent a ship of it's own to visit the Spanish colony of Mexico, but Nagasaki was where most trading and contact took place.
But the Tokugawas were still wary of the intentions of the foreigners. They thought that missionaries spreading Christianity was a preparation for the making of Japan into a colony, especially with the Catholic emphasis on leadership from the Vatican. When the Tokugawa Shogunate no longer needed the alliances of Catholic daimyo (feudal lords), they began an active persecution of Catholicism.
In 1614, Catholicism was banned in Japan. Thousands were killed and some left to live in other parts of Asia. This is what made the Protestant Dutch the favored European traders, instead of the Catholic Portuguese.
The Tokugawa Shogunate was especially wary of the Spanish and Portuguese, with their emphasis on Catholicism directed by the pope from Rome. Japan was well-aware of Spanish and Portuguese conquests and colonization in the western hemisphere.
On the other side of the world, U.S. president Millard Fillmore would very much have liked to end Japan's isolationist policy and, responding to the wishes of American business people in the heyday of Capitalism who wanted Japan as a business partner, sent a fleet led by Commodore Matthew Perry to open up Japan to trade.
I see this expedition as having a lot in common with the European settlement of the western hemisphere in that it had very long-term effects on the world. The contact between Europeans and the western hemisphere was known as the Columbian Exchange. Just in terms of crops, the Columbian Exchange brought apples, bananas, oranges and coffee to the western hemisphere and tomatoes, potatoes, corn and, chocolate to Europe. These new foods, particularly potato which can feed a lot of people per unit of cultivated area, enabled Europe to undergo the population growth which led to it having such an enormous influence on the world.
This mission to Japan was the beginning of a similar bridge between east and west. In Japan, it let the country know that it was technologically behind the west, and vulnerable as a result. It helped to initiate the series of events that led to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of the real power in the country to the emperor, known as the Meiji Restoration. The emperor moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, which became the permanent capital of the country. The Samurai as a social class and way of life came to an end. Some Samurai withdrew to the northernmost island of Hokkaido, and temporarily set up a state of their own, but were defeated by the emperor's forces. Japan became more open to the world, and Nagasaki again became the center of Catholicism in the country.
This far-reaching cross-exchange, similar in nature to the Columbian Exchange, is why, all around us today, we see Japanese names like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Isuzu, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Yokohama (tires) and, Nintendo. The products made by these Japanese companies are what was brought to the west, in the same way as the crops of the Columbian Exchange.
In modernizing and manufacturing an endless stream of products to sell to the west, Japan also set a precedent for other east Asian nations. It took western technology, and made it it's own, while still remaining Japanese. The same patterns tend to reflect among the east Asian nations, and this path to development has also been followed by China and Korea. Just try finding a home or building that does not have anything that has been made in China.
China today certainly makes high-quality but low-cost products in the same way. I once kept the same winter coat fir fifteen years. It was a Chinese-made coat and was so warm yet lightweight. I could be outside on a frigid winter day yet could scarcely feel the cold. The zip finally broke, but I still keep the coat in my car during the winter, to use as a blanket if I am driving when it is really cold.
But modern Japan became an imperial power like the westerners that it had earlier had contact with. Japan was given some formerly German islands in the Pacific during World War One, and later followed with conquests in Asia. The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, to preclude American interference with it's conquests, was very much a mirror-image reflection of the ships led by Commodore Matthew Perry forcing their way into Tokyo Bay more than eighty years before, when Japan did not have the military technology to resist.
One way that I like to explain history is in terms of how ironic it turns out to be. Nagasaki, which has been Japan's open window on the world, when the fleet sent by Millard Fillmore to open all of Japan to trade with the world, ended up being the target of one of the two atomic bombings in a war that was the unforseen consequence of the sending of that fleet.
This is what Nagasaki looks like today:
Remember that, if there is a compass showing on the right of the image, it is a 360 degree view, if not then it is a still photo. You can get more viewing space by clicking the arrow to "Hide Imagery". But if you click that on the first image, it seems that it may stop the following images from loading. You can pull the screen up or down or around with the mouse:
The east Asian nations are sometimes portrayed as rivals in the western press, but closely share the same historical patterns. Look at the similarity of the remaining Samurai of Japan withdrawing to the northern island of Hokkaido, to form their own society, and the Nationalists of China withdrawing to Taiwan following defeat by the Communists. It is so ironic that North Korea considers it's former occupier of Japan as an enemy because the isolationist and self-sufficiency policy if the Kim Dynasty seem to be a copy of the isolationism of the Tokugawa Shogunate, although Kim Jong Un is more in the mold of an all-powerful emperor. But all of this shutting out the barbarian outside world seems to be rooted in China's Great Wall.
In martial terms, three things that Japan is known for are it's castles and the martial arts of Karate and Judo. Karate is actually a development of Okinawa when it was occupied by Japan. I see Japan's approach to the outside world over the last four centuries as beginning with what we could call the Castle Period. This was the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate when the country was like a Japanese castle, surrounded by a moat, into which only a select few were permitted to enter. From the 1930s, as Japan became strong and modern, it embarked on building an empire by force, this could be called the Karate Period. Judo, much unlike karate, emphasizes taking an opponent's force and using it against him. This is what Japan perfected in the postwar period, taking what the west does in terms of technology and production, finding a way to do it better or cheaper, and then selling the products back to the west. The "salaryman" became the new Samurai of Japan.
