Japan’s Sakoku Period BBC Radio 4

First Broadcast Thursday 4 April 2013 at 9am  Duration:43 minutes

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Japan’s Sakoku period, two centuries when the country deliberately isolated itself from the outside world. Sakoku began with a series of edicts in the 1630s which restricted the rights of Japanese to leave their country and expelled Europeans living there. It was not until 1858 and the “gunboat diplomacy” of the American Commodore Matthew Perry that Japan’s international isolation finally ended.

Producer: Thomas Morris.

For more information see In Our Time on Radio 4