1639

Events in 1639 1

• 1639 Sakoku — Japan closes to the world The Tokugawa seal the country off for two centuries By 1639 the shogunate had expelled Europeans, banned Christianity and forbidden Japanese from leaving the country, on pain of death. Only a tiny Dutch trading post at Dejima in Nagasaki remained as a window to the West. This self-imposed isolation lasted more than 200 years.