This reclusive Japanese state continued existence in this manner for another two centuries until being forcibly opened to the outside world by American warships in the 1850s. Worried, “the Tokugawa family, who ruled on behalf of the Emperor,” following the events of Taiko, imposed “a policy known as kaikin or sakoku from 1635: on pain of death, no Japanese were permitted to leave the country, and foreign trade was heavily restricted with Dutch, Chinese and Korean traders permitted only on the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor and on outlying islands,” (Mitter 28). After first meeting Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and traders and being introduced to firearms in the sixteenth century, fears grew in Japan over the growing influence of these outsiders. The rapid militarization of Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a direct result of contact with western imperialism and industrialization. Taiko author Eiji Yoshikawa uses the story of Toyotomi Hideyoshi to emphasize the strength and importance of Japanese warriors in history, hoping this narrative would unite Imperial Japan in the spirit of conquest, whereas Tree with Deep Roots depicts the Korean alphabet as its historical rallying cry. Japanese victory in this affair launched them to a position as a great power in Asia. Rise of an Empire: Soldiers of the Emperor and the Czar clash in a pitched battle during the Russo-Japanese War.
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