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| Fig.1: Leave me alone...or else! |
Every once in while, we get in a mood where we really don't want to deal with other people and need a little "me time." Usually this passes after a short while... unless you're Japan, where your grumpy phrase lasts over two hundred years! From the 1630s until 1853, the Japanese closed its doors to the vast majority of foreign trade, diplomacy, and the latest international trends (meaning they missed out on the great "plaid fad" of the late 17th century). Even those few lucky nations with whom Japan reluctantly exchanged goods were restricted to a specific port on specific days and were required to avert their eyes to anything overtly Japanese. The rationale behind this isolation ranges from a desire to curb the growing European influence in the region, to establish control of the nation under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, to the fact that Portuguese people have really sweaty palms which grossed everyone out. It took a defiant, meddlesome act by an American (what else is new?) to open Japan's eyes to the world around them, allowing for their transformation into an industrialized superpower. Hmm, on second thought maybe we should have just let them be...
