A Giant Step Back

In this smallish book Perrin tells the story of how the Japanese nation voluntarily gave up the use of firearms for a period of nearly 300 years and "regressed" to the use of their more traditional weapons, the spear, bow, and sword.

This historical oddity had its actual beginnings with the arrival in Japan in 1543 of a couple of Portugese sailors carrying with them the first firearms, arquebuses, ever seen in that nation. A Japanese noble purchased the two weapons. In the prevailing climate of civil war in Japan, the usefulness of guns was quickly perceived. With extraordinary speed a Japanese firearms industry developed, producing matchlocks of extremely high quality. By 1575, little more than 30 years after the arrival of the Portugese guns, there was a battle in Japan in which just one of the opponents was able to march 10,000 gun-bearing troops onto the field. And only 20 years after that, the Japanese invading Korea were capable of putting 40,000 matchlockmen ashore.

The author believes, and the many excellent reproductions of contemporary Japanese "gun instruction manual" pictures in this book would tend to bear out, that the Japanese gunners achieved a devastatingly high standard of marksmanship with these relatively primitive weapons. He also believes that in quantity, quality, and skill in firearms use, the Japanese of this period probably outdistanced any of the European nations. Only in artillery were the Japanese inferior.

But Perrin says that suddenly, in 1603, the Japanese began to give up the use of the gun. Among a number of reasons for this, probably the major one was that the extremely large Japanese samurai warrior class violently objected to the existence of the quickly trained matchlock-bearing peasant levies who had become such menacing opponents. The samurai had invested long martial careers in perfecting their skills with the spear, bow, and sword, particularly the latter. The Japanese made the best swords in the world, and a mystique had grown up about their use.So the ruling class of Japan commenced a primitive but, Perrin claims, effective form of gun control. The manufacture of firearms became a government controlled monopoly, and only a tiny production was permitted. The use of firearms gradually declined and stopped.

This idyll for the samurai drew to a close 250 years later with Commodore Perry's visit to Japan in 1853 and the subsequent opening of the nation to foreign visits and trade. The Japanese rulers saw that they could not defend themselves against other nations while armed with only medieval weapons. Eventually a wholesale rearmament with guns was decreed.

In an afterword, Professor Perrin discusses the theory that all technology is uncontrollable and, once developed, inevitably will be used whether it is intrinsically desirable or not; e.g., "once man learns how to alter the DNA code, it is inevitable that he will alter it" and, indeed, will never stop doing it. Perrin believes that the Japanese temporary abandonment of the gun proves that technology is controllable. I am not at all sure that this particular historical oddity which took place during a period of prolonged peace in a feudal society within a "closed" nation is necessarily an event which establishes the author's case. Perrin also says that in successfully laying down their firearms the Japanese proved that "a no-growth economy is perfectly compatible with a prosperous and civilized life." I cannot see any way that the event proves that at all.

But whether or not one agrees with the author's contentions on technological control, the whole concept is one which most readers will find interesting and thought-provoking. The actual story of the Japanese reversion to the sword is told well and with a wealth of interesting detail.

GIVING UP THE GUN:Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879by Professor Noel PerrinGodine, 1979. 122 pp. $8.95

Historian Watt is the author of Dare Call It Treason, an account of the French Armymutinies of 1917, and The Kings Depart, aboutthe German revolution of 1919. His latest book, Bitter Glory: Poland and its Fate, 1918-1939, was published last month by Simon & Schuster.