Japanese Literature

Abstract

The conditions for modem Japanese literature were created when the country was opened to the outside world — after 218 years of isolation — at the end of 1857.Until 1853, when the American Commodore Perry arrived in Edo [later Tokyo] Bay and ‘requested’ the opening of relations between Japan and the USA, Japan had been almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world for over two centuries. Under the feudal Tokugawa system, inaugurated by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Japan was ruled from Edo by the shogun (‘barbarian-subduing great general’: in modem parlance, ‘generalissimo’); the imperial court was relegated to Kyoto, and the emperors wielded no power. In 1639 the country cut itself off from all outside influence except for the Dutch who were confined to the island of Nagasaki — and some Chinese. Christianity, which had previously been encouraged, was virtually extirpated. Subjects were forbidden to go abroad. Thus the Japanese were effectively cut off from the Renaissance and from the technological discoveries that came in its wake, their natural expansionist energies were frustrated, and they were forced to turn in upon themselves — with eventually, but not immediately, bad results for their literature. The Tokugawa instituted a highly efficient secret police system, and, in order to retain power, did all they could to keep their warrior-dominated, rigidly hierarchical society as static and as uncontaminated by the outside world as possible.