Defining engagement

Presenting fresh insights on the internal dynamics and global contexts that shaped foreign relations in early modern Japan, Robert I. Hellyer challenges the still largely accepted wisdom that the Tokugawa shogunate, guided by an ideology of seclusion, stifled intercourse with the outside world, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Examining diplomacy, coastal defense, and foreign trade, this study demonstrates that while the shogunate created the broader framework, foreign relations were actually implemented through cooperative but sometimes competitive relationships with the Satsuma and Tsushima domains ... Successive Tokugawa leaders also proactively revised foreign trade, especially with China ... In the nineteenth century, the system of foreign relations continued to evolve. The two domains of Satsuma and Tsushima subsequently played key roles in Japan's transition from using early modern East Asian practices of foreign relations to the national adoptation of international relations. -- Book Jacket.