The Tokugawa period was marked by internal peace, political stability, and economic growth. Social order was officially frozen, and mobility between classes (warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants) was forbidden. The samurai warrior class came to be a bureaucratic order in this time of lessened conflict. The shogunate perceived Roman Catholic missionaries as a tool of colonial expansion and a threat to the shogun’s authority and consequently banned Christianity and adopted a policy of national seclusion.
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