Christianity has an impact on Japan, largely through the efforts of the Jesuits, led first by Saint Francis Xavier (1506-52), who arrives in Kagoshima in southern Kyushu in 1549.

Both daimyo and merchants seeking better trade arrangements as well as peasants are among the converts.

By 1560 Kyoto has become another major area of missionary activity in Japan.

In 1568 the port of Nagasaki is established by a Christian daimyo, and turned over to Jesuit administration in 1579.

By 1582 there are as many as one hundred and fifty thousand converts (two percent of the population) and two hundred churches, but bakufu tolerance for this alien influence diminishes as the country becomes more unified and the openness of the period decreases.

Proscriptions against Christianity begin in 1587 and outright persecutions in 1597.

Although foreign trade is still encouraged, it is closely regulated, and by 1640 the exclusion and suppression of Christianity has become national policy.

...Kyushu, achieving some of his victories with Ieyasu's assistance.

Hideyoshi in 1577 had seized Nagasaki, Japan's major point of contact with the outside world.

He had taken control of the various trade associations and has tried to regulate all overseas activities.

Although China rebuffs his efforts to secure trade concessions, Hideyoshi succeeds in sending commercial missions to the Philippines, Malaya, and Siam (present-day Thailand).

He is suspicious of Christianity, however, as potentially subversive to daimyo loyalties and he has some missionaries crucified.

The famous Omura Sumitada, known as the lord who opened the port of Nagasaki to foreign trade, had been the first of the daimyo to convert to Christianity following the arrival of the Jesuit missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.

He is known as "Dom Bartolomeu".

Due to the instability during the Sengoku period, he and Jesuit leader Alexandro Valignano had conceived a plan to pass administrative control over to the Society of Jesus rather than see the Catholic city taken over by a non-Catholic daimyo.

Thus the city of Nagasaki has rom 1580 been a Jesuit colony, under their administrative and military control.

It has become a refuge for Christians escaping maltreatment in other regions of Japan Hideyoshi's campaign to unify the country had arrived in Kyūshū in 1587.

Hideyoshi, concerned with the large Christian influence in southern Japan, as well as the active and what he perceived as the arrogant role the Jesuits are playing in the Japanese political arena, had ordered the expulsion of all missionaries, and placed Nagasaki under his direct control.

The expulsion order has gone largely unenforced, however, and the fact remains that most of Nagasaki's population remain openly practicing Catholics.

The Spanish ship San Felipe is wrecked in 1596 off the coast of Shikoku, and Hideyoshi learns from its pilot that the Spanish Franciscans are the vanguard of an Iberian invasion of Japan.

In response, Hideyoshi orders the crucifixions of twenty-six Catholics (the "Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan") in Nagasaki on February 5 of this year.

Portuguese traders are not ostracized, however, and so the city continues to thrive.

Augustinian missionaries had arrived in Japan in 1602 and when Tokugawa Ieyasu took power in 1603, Catholicism was still tolerated.

Many Catholic daimyo had been critical allies at the Battle of Sekigahara, and the Tokugawa position was not strong enough to move against them.

Once Osaka Castle had been taken and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's offspring killed, though, the Tokugawa dominance had been assured.

In addition, the Dutch and English presence allows trade without religious strings attached.

Catholicism is thus officially banned in 1614 and all missionaries ordered to leave.

Most Catholic daimyo apostatize, and force their subjects to do so, although a few will not renounce the religion and leave the country for Macau, Luzon and Japantowns in Southeast Asia.

A brutal campaign of persecution follows, with thousands of converts across Kyūshū and other parts of Japan killed, tortured, or forced to renounce their religion.

...the ports of Nagasaki and ...

Economic development during the Tokugawa period includes urbanization, more shipping of commodities, a significant expansion of domestic and, initially, foreign commerce, and a diffusion of trade and handicraft industries.

Edo has a population of more than one million and Osaka and Kyoto each have more than four hundred thousand inhabitants by the mid-eighteenth century.

Many other castle towns grow as well.

Osaka and Kyoto become busy trading and handicraft production centers while Edo is the center for the supply of food and essential urban consumer goods.

The construction trades flourish along with banking facilities and merchant associations.

Increasingly, han authorities oversee the rising agricultural production and the spread of rural handicrafts.

The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-38, in which discontented Christian samurai and peasants rebel against the bakufu—and Edo calls in Dutch ships to bombard the rebel stronghold—marks the end of the Christian movement.

Soon thereafter the Portuguese are permanently expelled, members of the Portuguese diplomatic mission are executed, all subjects are ordered to register at a Buddhist or Shinto temple, and the Dutch and Chinese are restricted respectively to Deshima and a special quarter in Nagasaki.

Besides small trade of some outer daimyo with Korea and the Ryukyu Islands, to the southwest of Japan's main islands, by 1641 foreign contacts are limited to Nagasaki.

Japanese society of the Tokugawa period is influenced by Confucian principles of social order.

At the top of the hierarchy, but removed from political power, are the imperial court families at Kyoto.

The real political power holders are the samurai followed by the rest of society, in descending hierarchical order: farmers, who are organized into villages, artisans, and merchants.

Urban dwellers, often well-to-do merchants, are known as chonin (townspeople) and confined to special districts.

The individual has no legal rights in Tokugawa Japan.

The family is the smallest legal entity, and the maintenance of family status and privileges is of great importance at all levels of society.

...the island of Deshima in Nagasaki and ...