The Rise and Fall of Japan's First 'Enlightenment' by Lawrence Reed

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When talking about the Age of Enlightenment, Japan is usually not mentioned.

"... The Japanese seem instead to have stumbled toward freedom more for practical reasons than for ideological ones. Individuals began to exert their personal independence not because they attended the salons and tea houses of enlightened thinkers, but because central control was weakened with the fall of the last Kamakura shogunate. People then just did more of what they tend to do naturally when politicians get out of their way—they start businesses and engage in trade.

That brings us to the Muromachi Era, the period beginning with the fall of the Kamakura regime [1185 to 1333] and persisting for almost 250 years—until 1573. In some limited ways, it was Japan’s first Enlightenment, appearing and then disappearing before one ever got underway in Europe.

The one intellectual who enjoyed prominence in the Muromachi period was the ancient Chinese scholar Confucius (551 B.C. – 479 B.C.), whose nearly two-thousand-year-old writings staged a comeback. Confucianism during this time became an essential focus of learning in Japan. The philosopher’s essentially peaceful, self-improvement- and virtue-based teachings likely contributed to the growth of commerce. ...

Small businessmen and artisans organized trade associations for the first time in Japanese history, especially in the central part of the country where government control was weakest. Merchants during the Muromachi period, write professors Toyoda and Sugiyama, “sought economic and political independence, and we find among them…patterns of group association for self-protection.” Class distinctions even began to erode. Toyoda and Sugiyama reveal a “willingness to recognize able men of even the lowest orders of society and to allow them to exercise their talents.”

Austrian economist F. A. Hayek observed in the 20th Century that as shackles on freedom are removed in a society, it is not chaos that ensues but rather a “spontaneous order” that is ultimately more rational and beneficial than any state-run regimen. Signs of this very thing are apparent in the early Muromachi period in Japan.

Trade with China greatly increased during this time. “Japanese wood, sulfur, copper ore, swords, and folding fans,” writes Richard Mason in A History of Japan, “were traded for Chinese silk, porcelain, books, and coins, in what the Chinese considered tribute but the Japanese saw as profitable trade.”

Art and culture flourished as well, evidenced by such developments as Japanese ink painting, the indigenous stage drama known as Noh and the famous tea ceremony. ...
Not until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 would Japan see liberalization again ..."

By the end of the Muromachi Era, the Europeans arrived:

"By the end of the Muromachi period, the first Europeans had arrived. The Portuguese landed in Tanegashima south of Kyūshū in 1543 and within two years were making regular port calls, initiating the century-long Nanban trade period. In 1551, the Navarrese Roman Catholic missionary Francis Xavier was one of the first Westerners who visited Japan. ..." (Wikipedia)

The Rise and Fall of Japan's First 'Enlightenment' - Foundation for Economic Education What is the takeaway from Japan’s Muromachi Era? A little bit of freedom goes a long way.