Sakoku

Tokugawa shogunate prohibits Japanese overseas travel and return

A Japanese sailor who slipped abroad could be executed — and a Japanese expatriate could be killed merely for coming home.

Seventeen articles to the magistrates of Nagasaki

In 1635 the Tokugawa shogunate sent the joint magistrates of Nagasaki a seventeen-article order regulating overseas movement, Christianity, and foreign commerce.

It forbade Japanese ships and subjects from going abroad. A secret traveller was to be executed, the ship impounded, and its owner arrested — and Japanese residents returning from overseas were made liable to death as well.

One hundred pieces of silver

The magistrates were ordered to investigate places where Christianity was practised, reward informers, and search incoming ships for missionaries or adherents.

The order specified 100 pieces of silver for information identifying a high-ranking Christian priest. Christianity had already been prohibited nationwide by 1613; this tightened enforcement of an existing ban rather than creating one.

The clauses about silk

The same document regulated foreign trade rather than ending it. Several clauses governed prices, licensed purchasers, and the departure of Chinese and Portuguese ships.

The threat to destroy Portuguese galeotas and behead those aboard belongs to a separate order, the Portuguese exclusion of 1639.

Nor was Dejima yet Dutch: the Portuguese were moved onto the island in 1636 and expelled in 1639, and the Dutch factory transferred there from Hirado only in 1641.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Nagasaki’s official chronology dates the order to Kan’ei 12, fifth month, twenty-eighth day. The year 1635 is secure; the sheet avoids imposing an unnecessary modern-calendar day conversion.