The Shimabara rebellion also convinced many policy-makers that foreign influences were more trouble than they were worth. The Portuguese, who had been previously living on a specially-constructed island-prison in Nagasaki harbor called Deshima, were expelled from the archipelago altogether, and the Dutch were moved from their base at Hirado into the trading island. In 1720 the ban on Dutch books was lifted, causing hundreds of scholars to flood into Nagasaki to study European science and art. Consequently, Nagasaki became a major center of rangaku, or "Dutch Learning". During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate governed the city, appointing a hatamoto, the Nagasaki bugyÅ, as its chief administrator. Dutch East Indies- Japan |