Survival Arts

Excerpt from Noel Perrin's "Giving Up the Gun"

I'm working through a very short but fascinating book by Noel Perrin, Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 (this link refers to the 1995 reissue edition of the 1979 original I'm reading). I disagree with the author's central premise - Perrin praises the reversion to the sword as a shining example of "it can be done here too" - but his slant on the facts in no way, so far in my reading, detracts from the fascinating and detailed account he offers.

Here's one of many interesting excerpts (from p10, Shambhala edition of 1979, no longer published):

"But the thing Japan manufactured most of was weapons. For two hundred years she had been the world's leading exporter of arms. The whole Far East used Japanese equipment. In 1483, admittedly an exceptional year, 67,000 swords were shipped to China alone(1). A hundred and fourteen years later, a visiting Italian merchant named Francesco Carletti noted a brisk export trade in 'weapons of all kinds, both offensive and defensive, of which this country has, I suppose, a more abundant supply than any other country in the world'.(2) Even as late as 1614, when things were about to change, a single trading vessel from the small port of Hirado sailed to Siam with the following principal items of cargo: fifteen suits of export armor at four and a half taels the suit, eighteen short swords at half a tael each, twenty-eight short swords at a fifth of a tael, ten guns at four taels, ten guns at three taels, and fifteen guns at two and a half taels.(3)"

Reference #3 is attributed by Perrin to Ludwig Reiss' History of the English Factory at Hirado, which I suppose I will need to pick up during my next trip to Tokyo, since I can't find it in print on Amazon or elsewhere.

I'll be reviewing this book at length in a few days.