Sakoku

Sakoku, often translated as closed country or maritime prohibition, was the foreign relations policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate, formalised in a series of edicts from 1633 to 1639. It banned most foreigners and Christianity, forbade Japanese from travelling abroad and limited European trade to the Dutch at Dejima in Nagasaki. The arrival of American warships in the 1850s undermined the policy and exposed the shogunate's weakness.