Interesting little book (<100 pages) talking about a little-known episode in Japan's history: when Japan gave up guns and reverted to (mainly) swords.

Guns were introduced to Japan early on with the arrival of the first Europeans in 1543. And yet in 1854 when Cmdr Perry “opened up Japan” in his “black ships”, it seemed like nobody knew much about them. In fact, between those years, Japan had taken up the gun, improved it vastly (initially swordsmen triumphed over gunners because guns were susceptible to wet weather and took a long time to prime and reload), and then gave up on them. This book seeks to find out why.

• Samurai hated guns and wouldn’t have been caught dead carrying one. There was no bravery in it, no chance for individual glory and required little skill – they, highly-trained swordsmen, could be killed by a farmer wielding a matchlock. And their opinion counted, because they accounted for 10% of the population.
• Geopolitical reasons: Japan was under no territorial threat, and hadn’t any designs on other countries – they knew they couldn’t conquer China, and everyone else knew they couldn’t conquer them.
• Symbolic value of swords: the Japanese loved swords, their swords were the best in the world, and were the only embodiment of honour they could wear. To wear a sword meant you had a surname and were one of the upper classes. In fact, fighting swords doubled as works of art.
• Part of a general reaction to outside ideas, including Christianity.
• Aesthetic reasons: handling a gun was ungraceful, you had to actually kneel with your legs apart (shock and horror) and unergonomic.

In fact I think reason number 2 is by far the most important reason. If other people had been continually attacking the Japanese with guns, they would’ve been forced to continue developing their skill in them. As it was, they didn’t until the arrival of Perry, when they threw themselves wholeheartedly into military technology and general Westernisation and modernisation with the Meiji era.

This book was a good little read – I had no idea all this had happened. Also Perrin has a wry touch of humour. Sample funny bit:

26. “That same year [1584], the two leading generals in Japan met with their armies at a place called Komaki. Both had the lessons of Nagashino very clearly in mind, and both had a high proportion of gunners among their troops. The result was an impasse. Not only were there no introductions and no individual heroics, neither general would allow his cavalry to attack at all against the other’s guns. Instead, both armies dug trenches, settled in, and waited, firing an occasional volley or blowing up a few of the enemy with a land mine to pass the time. In some ways it was like a scene from World War I, three and a half centuries ahead of schedule. In the end the two commanders made an alliance, and went off to fight other armies that were less constricted by their own technology.”

Also, there is some testimony as to just how good Japanese swordsmen could be:

73 ”...he recalled an incident a few years earlier in which two samurai had attacked twelve fully armed British dragoons in Kyoto (they were the embassy guard), and had disabled nine of them with spectacular swordplay, not getting a single bullet wound themselves.”

Sounds like Rurouni Kenshin!