THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN
our boast that no foreign conqueror ever polluted the soil of Japan, but these attempts at aggression from the outside hardened our insular prejudice into a desire for complete isolation from the rest of the world. Soon after the Jesuit war the building of vessels large enough to ride the high seas was forbidden, and no one was allowed to leave our shores. Our sole point of contact with the outside world was at the port of Nagasaki, where the Chinese and the Dutch were permitted, under strict surveillance, to carry on trade. For the space of nearly two hundred and seventy years we were as one buried alive!
Yet a worse fate was in store for us. The Tokugawa shoguns, who brought about this remarkable isolation of Japan, ruled the country from 1600 to
20
