TALES FROM HISTORY
The Incredible Tale of the Elephant Who had an Audience with the Japanese Emperor
The Edo-era travels and adventures of Shiro the elephant
During the Edo era (1603–1867), Japan effectively closed its doors to the outside world. The Tokugawa shoguns had had enough of subversive European influences, such as Christianity, firearms, and suspicious Portuguese and Spanish traders. The third shogun, Iemitsu, slammed the door to all, except very limited, trade.
The Dutch were the only Westerners allowed access to Japan, and that through the highly controlled island port of Dejima in Nagasaki, on the southern island of Kyushu.
The few other windows to the outside world were also tightly controlled: Satsuma, in the south, traded with the Kingdom of Ryukyu (modern-day Okinawa), and through them, surreptitiously with the Qing Chinese; the island of Tsushima traded with Korea; Matsumae, in northern Honshu, traded with the Ainu — the indigenous people of Hokkaido and northeast Honshu; and by the late 17th century, the Qing Chinese were allowed to trade through their Chinese quarter in Nagasaki.
Yet, as the decades of self-imposed isolation passed, a desire and curiosity for things outside their world grew. In 1720, Shogun Tokugawa…
