Dutch Studies in Japan

• Although Confucianism remained dominant ideology, reformist intellectuals and their rivalries were emerging.
• In the same decades, a national studies group emerged, praising Japanese traditions like the emperor and Shinto religion.
• One national studies writer expressed a sentiment in the late eighteenth century that Japan was the native land of the Heaven-Shining Goddess which surpasses all other countries.
• The influence of the national studies school grew by the early nineteenth century, inspiring ultranationalist sentiment later on.
• A second, smaller group was the Dutch Studies group.

Dutch Studies

• Major Western works were banned initially, but Japanese translators kept Dutch knowledge alive to deal with trade in Nagasaki.
• The ban on Western books was lifted in 1720.
• Japanese Scholars interested in "Dutch medicine" created Western scientific advances due to the superiority of Western anatomy texts.
• By 1850, there were Dutch Studies schools in major cities, whose students sought freer exchange with the West and rejection of Chinese medicine and culture.

Japanese Economy in the 19th Century

• Japanese culture showed lively debate.
• The Japanese economy continued developing in the nineteenth century.
• Commerce expanded, large merchant companies established monopolies.
• Manufacturing expanded in the countryside with consumer goods like soy sauce and silks, organized by city merchants.
• Japan had a running start on industrialization compared to the events in the West.
• By the 1850s economic growth slowed.
• Due to some scholar's stress, Japan was backwards compared to the West and they faced technological limitations constraining agricultural expansion and population increase.
• Rural riots increased, starting in the late eighteenth century, aimed at wealthy peasants, merchants, and landlord controls.
• Authorities suppressed protests.

Challenge to Isolation

• Some Japanese became increasingly worried about potential outside threats
• In 1791, a book advocated for a strong navy.
• Fears regarding the West's growing power and Russia's Asian expansion grew in later decades.
• In 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay near Tokyo.
• Perry threatened bombardment in order to force Japan to trade with Americans.
• The United States exerted pressure via heightened military superiority to open markets.
• In 1854, Perry returned and won the right to station an American consul in Japan.
• In 1856, through a formal treaty, two ports in Japan opened.