11 - Making Sushi of the Shogunate - The Opening of Japan

Footnotes of History

Want more FOH? Visit footnotesofhistory.com/join Shownotes at footnotesofhistory.com/11 Today’s episode takes us eastwards during the turbulent 1850s as two nations - indeed civlisations - clash. During the mid Victorian period, newly industrialised powers steamed towards the Orient, drawn by a triumvirate of forces, including gold, the missionary’s salvation and the mystery of a society closed to the world for well over a hundred years. Traders had tried in vain to offer up goods for Japanese gold, but to no avail – the Tokugawa Shogunate (the de facto rulers) kept Japan firmly locked down. That is, until Perry arrived and effectively forced the Shogunate to sign a deal – one of many “deals” that the East would be subjected to by warlike western nations during the nineteenth century – a new style of imperialism that did not subjugate nations to rule them directly as in Africa and India – but rather to have their governments act as impotent middlemen to the real power.