In 1614 Ieyasu prohibited Christianity and began to torture and execute missionaries and those of their converts who refused to disavow their religion. In 1635 a later shogun went even further by forbidding Japanese to travel overseas and forbidding Japanese ships to leave Japan’s coastal waters. Four years later, he expelled all the remaining Portuguese from Japan. Japan thereupon entered a period, lasting over two centuries, in which it cordoned itself off from the rest of the world, for reasons reflecting even more its agendas related to China and Korea than to Europe.
