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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 390
EAN num: 9780879237738
ISBN number: 0879237732
Label: David R Godine
Manufacturer: David R Godine
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 136
Printing Date: January 01, 1995
Publishing house: David R Godine
Sale Popularity Level: 74134
Studio: David R Godine
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This is a significant story, and Perrin tells it marvelously well, with rich detail, captivating quotations from observers of the time, both Japanese and Western, and a wealth of revealing comparisons with contemporary technology, warfare, and life in Europe. This little book is both thought-provoking and a delight to read. Edwin O. Reischauer, Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan
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Rated by buyers -
"Giving Up the Gun" isn't intended to be exhaustive or deeply detailed. It's the story of one civilization's conscious choice to forgo a modern technology in favor of tradition, told in 92 pages plus notes by essayist Noel Perrin. Perrin was not a scholar of Japanese history, but he consulted 700-800 books and articles to learn the story and context of Japan's 200-year reversion to the sword, so the book does seem well-researched as far as it goes. The emphasis is not on Japanese politics or social order, which are explained only so far as they relate to the main theme, or on sword or firearms technologies, but rather on the reasons that a highly civilized culture chose to turn the clock back on military technology, at least for a while.
The gun was introduced to Japan in 1543 by Portuguese adventurers who sold two matchlocks to a Japanese feudal lord in the middle of the Age of the Country at War, when arms were much in demand. The Japanese applied their considerable arms manufacturing capabilities to guns, and the nation's feudal armies were shortly outfitted with muskets. For a century guns were a staple of Japanese armies, then they gradually fell out of favor. Perrin examines the social and geographic reasons that the Japanese chose to forgo this efficient weapon in favor of the more elegant and culturally meaningful sword. And he compares Japan to the parallel struggle between guns and swords in Europe, where the guns won out.
Japan's reversion to the sword, until it took up the gun again in the mid-19th century, is a curiosity to Westerners that might simply be self-evident to the Japanese. But Noel Perrin didn't choose this subject because it's odd. He wrote this book in 1979, at the height of debate over nuclear arms, to make the point that civilizations can and have abandoned advanced military technologies in favor of conventional arms. This idea may influence Perrin's perspective on Japanese history, but he only drives his point home at the beginning and end of the book, so "Giving Up the Gun" doesn't suffer unduly from present-day politics. It's a pleasant read about an interesting cultural phenomenon, illustrated with about 25 black-and-white renderings of Japanese screens, woodcuts, and other artwork.
Rated by buyers 
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Guns are great equalizers. With a gun, a cheap punk can become a lord of crime, a splay-footed peasant can become a legendary dacoit. With guns, or their predecessors the crossbows and long bows, an army of villagers can destroy the flower of chivalry; the Swiss Cantons can resist the Holy Roman Empire, English commoners can demolish mounted knights at Agincourt. The sword is the weapon of a trained full-time soldier, a monopolist of force, an aristocrat. It is not in the interests of aristocracy to give fighting power to the masses. This would seem to be the realization of the samurai classes of Tokugawa Japan, during the 17th Century, when direct contact with European technology, especially the guns, was deliberately restricted and Japan entered its centuries of isolation. The technological restrictments were selective, not an endeavor to preserve an aesthetic Utopia or a mystic Zen serenity. Western inventions such as agricultural machinery, blasting powder for mining and canal-building, and smelting with air-blowers were all accepted and improved without further dependency. What was preserved was the feudal structure of Japanese society based, as all feudal societies are, upon the private monopoly of violence.
That, anyway, is what I remember to be the content of Noel Perrin's "Giving Up the Gun", which I read more than 20 years ago. From the amazon review by WD O'Neil, I take it that other readers have drawn different lessons, and that Prof. Perrin's work is not unchallenged. I can hardly either defend or challenge Perrin's work, being no sort of scholar of Japanese history. The little book, only 89 pages plus notes, is more a novella for a reader like me than a new gospel. It's well written and thought-provoking. Even if it overdraws its evidence, as some critics claim, it taught me a lot more about Tokugawa history than I knew before.
"Giving Up the Gun" came back to mind after I watched a new DVD release of the classic samurai film "Harakiri" by the director Kobayashi. In the film, an impoverished samurai discovers that the ideals of his clan have become corrupted and that his "masters" are scornfully indifferent to his sufferings. A brilliant swordsman, he comes after them for revenge. The supreme act of revenge, however, the symbolic "execution" of the feudal spirit as embodied in the samurai armour on the clan altar, is thwarted when it is revealed that the clan leaders have guns hidden for such occasions.
The book and the film surely complement each other. I recommend both.
Rated by buyers 
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If you take a course relating to Japanese history of this period one of the very first things they will do is warn you off Perrin. He had no real knowledge of Japanese history but got this neat idea about how he imagined it happened and then looked for facts to "prove" his point, ignoring all the things that didn't fit with what he "knew" just had to be the truth.
The fact is that guns helped the three great unifiers of Japan (Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu) create a government that was strong enough to end war completely for 250 years (from 1615 to the 1860s). Guns were unnecessary and not needed, so not many were made. End of story, no mysterious Japanese reverence for the sword or resistance to modern things required.
See for instance the review by Conrad Totman in _Journal of Asian Studies_, v. 39 (1980): 599-601.
Rated by buyers -
I am a Japanese and International Studies double major, and while I was in Japan last semester I picked this book for a research project, primarily because it was short and I had very little time to waste. Then I started reading, and the hours just slipped away as I diligently marked almost every page with sticky tabs and highlighter, because it was just that awesome. The paper I was supposed to write was only required to be 4-5 pages long; I ended up with 9 pages, after I cut out a lot of other info. This book is small, yes, but it is filled with useful information presented in an interesting way.
I've always had issues with history books that take potentially fascinating subjects and make them dull and boring. This book, unlike most of it's genre, was absolutely enthralling. I could not put it down. It's short, it's cheap, and it's interesting. If you have any interest in Japanese history, I think you should pick up this book.
Rated by buyers 
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Perrin's book has a great focus: the Japanese gun. Usually, one associates the sword with Japanese martial arts. Here, Perrin explains that the Japanese not only adopted the arbusque but improved on it to a point where it became too efficient a means to kill the enemy. Ironically, the Tokugawa shoguns had to eliminate it to preserve the Pax Tokugawa that would run for 250+ years.
The book is easy to read: he approaches the material from a variety of angles (source material from Japan, modern comparisons of contemporary European nations as well as contemporary comparisons by visitors back in the 17th and 18th centuries). It is also well documented -- the list of notes alone provides one with a shopping list of future reading. Overall though, I felt the book failed to expand and build its argument -- it just kept repeating itself chapter after chapter.
Another complaint I have is that, looking at the Japanese sources, Perrin tended to rely upon WWII Admiral Seiho Arima's _Kaho no kigen sono denryu_. Arima's research into pre-Meiji gunsmithing does seem like a good source of material, but one wonders if there were other sources of scholarship to include. Otherwise, Perrin relies a lot on Western scholarship.
A final complaint about the book is the reproduction of the artwork. The grey and white reproductions at times are fuzzy. A close-up instead of the full work at times might have been more helpful for the reader.
Although the book is written in a light scholarly tone which anyone can read, if it were not for its tight focus on its subject matter I would not recommend the book. Its value lies in its exploration of a subject which goes overlooked in studies of Japanese culture. A half-hearted recommendation.
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