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Part 2 traces Japanese history from 1603, when Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun, until a successor threw all foreigners out of the country some 35 years later. It was an era in which Ieyasu set out to control Japan with a wide array of intrusive laws that dictated such things as what people could eat and wear, and where they could travel. His successor, his brutal grandson Iemitsu, began a vigorous persecution of Christians, and after a Christian-inspired uprising in southern Japan in 1637, "the doors of Japan clanged shut" to all Westerners, says narrator Richard Chamberlain.