Framework of Japan's Sakoku Edicts

Timeline

1. 1616Edo · JapanThe Tokugawa shogunate ordered that European merchant ships be restricted to anchoring at Hirado and Nagasaki, setting a precedent for the later full closure of the country, and began systematic investigation and suppression of Christian activity.
2. 1622Nagasaki · KyushuThe shogunate mass-executed 55 Catholic missionaries and believers (including Jesuits) at Nagasaki, an event known as the Great Martyrdom of Genna—the largest single execution of Christians in Japanese history—marking the shift from scattered suppression to systematic eradication of Christianity.
3. 1624Hirado · KyushuThe shogunate formally expelled the Spanish and banned Spanish ships from entering port, on the grounds that Spanish missionary activity threatened shogunal rule. This made the Netherlands the only European nation permitted to trade at Hirado, further narrowing the range of foreign engagement.
4. 1633–1639Edo · JapanThe shogunate issued five edicts in 1633, 1634, 1635, 1636, and 1639, banning Japanese from going abroad, prohibiting Japanese overseas from returning, expelling the Portuguese, and relocating the Dutch factory to Dejima in Nagasaki, thereby completing the sakoku framework.
5. 1641–1854Dejima, Nagasaki · KyushuThe Dutch VOC factory was moved to the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki, where, together with Chinese merchants, it became the only foreign power permitted to trade at Nagasaki. The sakoku system then operated stably for over two hundred years, ending only in 1854 when the United States forced Japan to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa.