India, April 25 -- For about 200 years, between 1630 and 1854, the Japanese Shogunate under the Tokugawa rulers closed the archipelago 's borders.

Residents were banned from leaving and, more significantly, missionaries from the West were banned from entering the country. Trade was managed through a sliver of an opening: four gateways identified for trade with different regions.

As the Edo period gave way to the Meiji, Japan's sakoku or isolationist policy was no longer sustainable in the face of the industrial and military advancements of colonial powers.

When the country reopened, art was one of the first things immediately affected.

In fact, such was the influence of Western painting techniques and Western schools of art that the J...