Foreign settlement

A foreign settlement (Japanese: 外国人居留地, pronounced "Gaikokujin kyoryūchi") was a special area in a treaty port, designated by the Japanese government in the second half of the nineteenth century, to allow foreigners to live and work.

After the visits of Commodore Perry in 1853 and 1854, Japan entered a period of rapid social and economic transition from a closed, feudalistic society to a more open, modern trading nation state.

[1] Japan first opened two ports to allow foreign trade, Shimoda and Hakodate after the signing the Convention of Kanagawa with the United States in 1854.

Trade agreements signed with the United States were swiftly followed by similar ones with Britain, the Netherlands, Russia and France.

Before the system of treaty port concessions ended in 1899 seven foreign settlements had been established in Japan.