Tokugawa Japan Closes Its Doors

After a century of civil war, the victor at Sekigahara founded the Tokugawa shogunate and then did something remarkable: he and his heirs largely sealed Japan off from the outside world, expelling missionaries, banning most foreign trade, and forbidding Japanese from leaving on pain of death. The result was over 250 years of peace, a flowering of distinctly Japanese culture — and a country that fell technologically behind the West it had shut out. It is a rare case of a state choosing stability over dynamism, and getting exactly what it chose.