On January 16, 1830 a foreign sailing ship suddenly appeared and anchored off the coast of Mugi, a small town in modern day Tokushima Prefecture on the southern island of Shikoku. At the time, Japan was still in its feudal closed door isolation policy period, a self imposed exile, cut off from the rest of the world. Apart from a few Dutch, and even fewer Chinese ships allowed to berth at Deshima, a small island off Nagasaki, no other ships were allowed in Japanese waters, and no Japanese could leave the island nation either on the penalty of death.
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