For two hundred and fifty years, Japan was shut in, as if with the bolts and bars, from all foreign intercourse. Every vestige of her foreign trade was abolished. Only a few Chinese and one or two Dutch traders were permitted to remain unmolested at a small port called Deshima. Christian were denounced as the “wicked sect.”
But Iyeyasu himself, the ruthless persecutor, could not resist the impetus given to his country. He instituted many reforms in the government, and caused the first great history of Japan to be composed and published. Tsunayoshi, his successor, founded a university for the study of Chinese classics, and the teachings of the great Mongol sage Confucius. An observatory was built, and the heavens were scanned with wonder and delight; and those matchless mausoleums at Nikko, now the national shrines of Japan, were erected to the memories of the great shogun rulers, Iyeyasu, and Iyemitsu, his grandson.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
