Treaty of Shimoda

The Treaty of Shimoda (下田条約, Shimoda Jouyaku) (formally Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Russia 日露和親条約, Nichi-Ro Washin Jouyaku) of February 7, 1855 was the first treaty between the Russian Empire, and the Empire of Japan, then under the administration of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Following shortly after the Convention of Kanagawa signed between Japan and the United States, it effectively meant the end of Japan’s 220-year-old policy of national seclusion (sakoku), by opening the ports of Nagasaki, Shimoda and Hakodate to Russian vessels and established the position of an Russian consuls in Japan and defined the borders between Japan and Russia.

The isolation of Japan

Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate pursued a policy of isolating the country from outside influences. Foreign trade was maintained only with the Dutch and the Chinese and was conducted exclusively at Nagasaki under a strict government monopoly. This policy had two main objectives. One was the fear that trade with western powers and the spread of Christianity would serve as a pretext for the invasion of Japan by imperialist forces, as had been the case with most of the nations of Asia. The second objective was fear that foreign trade and the wealth developed would lead to the rise of a daimyo powerful enough to overthrow the ruling Tokugawa clan. The first contacts between Japan and Russia were made with the Matsumae clan in Hokkaido by the merchant Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin in 1778 and by official envoy Adam Laxman in 1792. The Russian expedition around the world led by Adam Johann von Krusenstern stayed six months in the port of Nagasaki in 1804-1805, failing to establish diplomatic and trade relations with Japan.