Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Although Japan was nominally ruled by an emperor, for several centuries real power had lain in the hands of the country's shogun, or military leader; his warlord followers, the daimyos; and their elite warrior corps, the samurai. . . . All samurai were required to sign oaths of obedience to the shogunate. . . . In 1603 a fiercely brilliant warlord named Tokugawa Ieyasu was named shogun, ending more than a century of civil wars and dynastic conflict. The Tokugawa shogunate would last for more than 250 years, a period of stability, prosperity, ad growing isolation for Japan. . . . Ieyasu first welcomed the Dutch, English, and Portuguese traders . . . But he came to fear the religious influence exerted by the Jesuits, who had made some 150,000 converts. In 1612 Ieyasu began to expel Franciscans and Jesuits from Japan; his son Hidetada crucified 55 Christians in 1622. . . . In the 1630s Japan entered a period of extreme isolation that lasted more than 200 years. . . . A new, prosperous middle class created literature and art . . . Zen Buddhism, imported from China, took root, bringing the simplicity of the countryside into the growing cities." [National Geographic Almanac, p. 204-5]