Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate had strictly forbidden foreign…

Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate had strictly forbidden foreign books from 1640, but in 1720, Yoshimune, Japan’s eighth Tokugawa shogun, repeals the laws against European books and study.

This act initiates an influx of foreign books and their translations into Japan, and the development of Western studies, or Rangaku.

Yoshimune, who is often considered the most politically able Tokugawa shogun after the line's founder, Tokugawa Ieyasu, is best known for his financial reform and for dismissing his conservative adviser Arai Hakuseki and instigating the Kyōhō reforms.