Sakoku (Japanese: literally "country in chains" or…

Sakoku (Japanese: literally "country in chains" or "lock up of country") remains in effect in Japan.

No foreigner can enter or Japanese can leave the country on penalty of death, under the foreign relations policy enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633-1639.

Many isolated attempts to end Japan's seclusion have been made by expanding Western powers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

American, Russian, and French ships have all attempted to engage in relationship with Japan, but have been rejected.

An American businessman in Guangzhou named Charles W. King sees an opportunity to open trade by trying in 1837 to return to Japan three Japanese sailors who had been shipwrecked a few years before on the coast of Oregon and who he had picked up in Macau.

It also carries Christian missionaries such as Samuel Wells Williams.

Sailing to Uraga Channel with Morrison, an unarmed American merchant ship, the ship is fired upon several times, and finally sails back unsuccessfully.

The nature of the ship's mission will become known one year after the event, and this will result in increased criticism of the Edict.

Japan will remain closed.