How Did Europeans Enter Japan

European Exploration: In 1543, shipwrecked Portuguese sailors washed up on the shores of southern Japan. Merchants soon followed them. Their intentions were to involve themselves in Japan’s trade with China and southeast Asia. They brought clocks, eyeglasses, tobacco, firearms and other unfamiliar items from Europe. Japanese purchased weapons and soon started their own production. Cannons especially had a huge impact on Japan’s warfare and living situations. They started to build fortified castles to withstand the destructive force. These castles attracted merchants, artisans, and other surrounding lands. These lands are now converted into towns and cities. Europeans entering Japan is very important in their history because it introduced more advanced weapons which benefited Japan’s warfare.

Christianity in Japan: In 1587, Toyatomi Hideyoshi became worried that christianity’s growing influence would threaten his control over Japan. To try to prevent that from happening, he issued an edict outlawing Christianity and expelling missionaries. After a few years in 1597, when his method was not being effective, he arrests twenty four christians and executes twenty nine of them. When they were arrested, onlookers were torturing them by chopping off their ears, stabbed with spears, and left to hang for eighty days.
This caused the shogunate to place foreigners under tighter restrictions. Ultimately, they forced them all to leave and barred all relations with the outside world except for severely restricted Dutch and Chinese merchants. This was extremely important because Japan’s isolation enabled them to progress as a country and become informed on what is new around the world. It also did not allow them to create new opportunities and just made them stay