After strict measures had been adopted to stop the entrance of missionaries,Japanese priests educated abroad were sent. The gov ernment now resorted to a strict supervision upon Japanese junks engaged in foreign trade and the Japanese coming back from abroad, 1633. Finding this still inadequate the govern ment forbade all Japanese junks to go abroad under severe penalty, 1636. This put an end to an active trade with Tonkin, Cochinchina, Cambodia, Siam and most important /places of die Malay Peninsula, which had continued to grow since the time of Hideyoshi and with whose sovereigns the Tokugawa government used. to carry on correspondence. In many of these places there were considerable Japanese settlements; the Japanese soldiers of fortune sometimes played very important roles, like Yamada-Nizayemon in Siam.
The Portuguese merchants were shut up in an artificial island, Desima, in the harbor of Nagasaki, 1635, and all the descendants of the Europeans in Nagasaki and Hirado were sent away. In December 1637 the peasants of Arima, who had been long groaning under heavy, taxes, rose against their oppressors. The Christians of Amakusa joined them. After some delay the government forces arrived. The Christians defended themselves very bravely in the castle of Hara, some 45,000, women and children in clusive, against 120,000 trained soldiers. The siege lasted for more than three months, but the castle was finally taken by a general assault, 12 April 1638, and most of the besieged were put to death.
This revolt made the government even more suspicious of the Christians, and suspecting that the Portuguese were at the back of the rebels decided to put an end to the Portuguese com merce, which although broken in 1610, when the Prince of Arima attacked the Madre de Dios in the harbor of Nagasaki as the captain had refused to appear before the authorities and answer the charge of having murdered some Japanese who visited Macao in 1608 in a junk belonging to the Prince, and the was acci dentally burned and all the crew perished, was restored in 1611 by Dom Nuno Sotomaior who came as ambassador of the viceroy. Two ves sels which arrived in 1639 were sent back with orders never to return under penalty of death, and when in 1640 an embassy came from Macao, the ambassadors with all their suites excepting 13, mostly blacks, were executed and the ship sunk.
In 1647 an attempt at the renewal of the trade was made by Dom Gonealo Siqueira de Souza, who came to Nagasaki as Ambassador from Portugal to announce its independence from Spain and the accession of John IV to the throne, but it proved a failure. Another
attempt was made in 1685, when a junk with 12 Japanese was wrecked off Macao, but the cap tain of the vessel that took them to Nagasaki was sent back with strict injunctions to return no more.
The relations with Portugal, however, lasted so long that they have left many indelible traces. In the Japanese language there are numerous words of Portuguese origin, some of which are so perfectly naturalized that their foreign origin does not strike one at once. Such are: boro (bolo, cake), kompeito (confeitos, comfits), pan (pao, bread), hiryuzu (filhos, omelette), koppu (copo, glass), botan (boffin, button), batteira (bateira, boat), rasha (raxa, cloth), jiban (gibao, undershirt), birodo (veludo, velvet), kappa (caps, cloak), zambo or zabon (zamboa, pompoleon), marmero (mar melo, quince), etc.
When the Portuguese ships were sent away in 1639, the Dutch thought that they had now got the monopoly of the trade, and it was made an occasion of a ffite at Batavia. But they were very soon undeceived. In November 1640 they were ordered to demolish the new stone warehouse at Hirado, and the next year they were removed to Nagasaki. They were closely confined in the small island of Desima which they were seldom allowed to leave. There they were allowed to carry on commerce on a limited scale under strict supervision of the authorities. All these measures were taken to prevent the entrance of Christian mission aries. Every conceivable device that might be resorted to by them was carefully provided against. The government succeeded so well that after the execution of some missionaries who came in 1643, only one more attempt is re corded. In 1708 a Jesuit father, Giovanni Bat tista Sidoti, landed at an island near Satsuma, but was discovered and sent to Nagasaki and thence to Yedo, where he died in prison 1715.
The policy of seclusion was carried out. Be sides the Dutch only the Chinese and Koreans were allowed to trade with Japan, and em bassies were sent from Korea on occasions of the Shoguns' assuming the government.
During the centuries that followed, the only notices Europe had ofJapan were through the Dutch. Engelbert Kaempfer (1690-92), Charles Peter Thurberg (1775-76), and Philipp Franz von Siebold (1823-30), all physicians to the factory of Nagasaki, contributed above all others to the knowledge of Japan in Europe. The works of Isaac Titsingh, J. F. van Over meer Fisscher and G. F. Meijlan, who were members of the factory, gave further informa tion about Japan.