ABSTRACT
Historians effectively have debunked the notion that Japan was an isolated or "closed society" (sakoku) during its early modern period. In the end, that is perhaps a good way to summarize Japanese foreign policy in the early modern period: there were a few points, such as the bans on Christianity and the Portuguese, that were not open to negotiation, but most aspects of foreign relations were comparatively fluid. Except for a few years in the nineteenth century, there never was a clear-cut anti-foreign policy, apart from Tokugawa abhorrence of the Portuguese, and even the harsh order to fire on foreign vessels was quickly abandoned. It is no surprise, then, that when the Americans arrived in 1853, and were soon followed by other nations, the Japanese were able to adapt to the new international situation relatively quickly. Japanese also became a sizable minority in the European centers of trade, particularly at Batavia, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company.
