The Dutch were the "gossipers" so to speak. Surprisingly, the emperor began placing tighter restrictions on the citizens as well. Citizens were not allowed to leave Japan, and Japanese citizens that were not in Japan were forbidden to return in the fear that they might bring their contagious corrupt foreign principles with them upon their return; restriction to the island will be a contributing factor in the flowering of the arts in a need for diversions. Severe executions were then carried out for Christians who did not change their faith, as a Dutchman named Gysbertsz later recorded.
Another eight persons, after having been tormented in various ways, were beheaded, whilst the remaining six-teen were brought to a place called Jigoku in Japanese, which is as much to say Hell. This place is a great pool of seething boiling water [a natural geyser] which gushes out from under a steep cliffthese poor wretches were brought to a cliff, and after being placed on the edge of the bluff, were asked once again if they wished to recant [deny their faith]? And since they replied "No," they were thrown from above into this seething boiling water, and thus did these poor martyrs render their souls with great steadfastness to God (Nardo 93).
This description by itself depicts the paranoia of the loss of culture in Japan by the Tokugawa Shogunate at the time. In the long run however, all of this would end up helping Japan allowing it to grow not only as a country, but also internally as a society. .
Japan itself is a feudal society with a strictly defined hierarchy. Where Europe had moved on from Feudalism to Mercantilism, the system of Feudalism remained in Japan, as said by Patrick Smith.
The Tokugawa ruled for two and a half centuries, until 1868. Theirs was the most extreme form of feudalism Japan had ever known. The Japanese lived like figurines in a bell jar locked in hereditary status and the ancient, cyclical time of masters and cultivators.
