April 5, 2026
Return gets... returned
The East India Company in Japan
England knocks, Japan bolts the door—readers debate ‘closed’ vs ‘selective’ history
TLDR: England’s East India Company traded in Japan in 1613–1623 but was turned away in 1673 as the shogunate enforced maritime bans and kept only Dutch trade. Comments split between museum-and-novel hype and a hot take that English gunpowder sales looked like profiteering, fueling a ‘closed vs selective’ history debate.
History class just became a comment war. Readers ate up the saga of England’s East India Company sailing into Japan in 1613 with royal letters, trading for a decade, then getting turned away in 1673—yes, the ship named Return got returned. The facts: Tokugawa rulers tightened ‘maritime prohibitions,’ pushed out most Europeans, kept a sliver of trade via the Dutch on Dejima, and even pointed to England’s Portuguese queen as a deal‑breaker. Scholars argue calling it a ‘closed country’ is Eurocentric; others reply that’s exactly how Europeans saw it, a door half‑cracked to neighbors but shut to them.
From there, the thread split. Bookworms dropped recs for David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and a niche museum stop. Strategists insisted the English looked like munitions merchants, peddling gunpowder and opportunity—no wonder the Shogun flinched. The semantics battle raged: sakoku (‘closed country’) vs kaikin (‘maritime bans’). Was Japan slamming the door or just installing a peephole? Meme‑makers had a field day: “Japan invented ghosting,” one joked; others quipped “Open for Dutch business, closed for drama.” Verdict from the crowd: fascinating story, messy motives, and a title that launched a thousand hot takes.
Key Points
- •The EIC received permission in 1613 to trade in Japan, establishing a factory in Hirado and brief outposts in Edo and Sakai.
- •English trade lasted about a decade (1613–1623) before the EIC withdrew due to discouragements.
- •A 1673 English attempt to resume trade was refused; the ship Return was turned away from Nagasaki.
- •Tokugawa-era edicts (1610s–1640s) banned Christianity and restricted foreign trade and travel; Portuguese were expelled in 1639, while the Dutch traded under strict confinement at Deshima.
- •Scholars argue Japan was not fully closed, preferring ‘kaikin’ over ‘sakoku’; the term ‘sakoku’ gained currency via Kaempfer’s writings and Shizuki Tadao’s 1801 translation.