Giving Up the Car

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/04/giving-up-car.html

I just finished reading Noel Perrin's "Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879" for the second time. The first time I read it was for a dinner party/discussion group with noted military history professor Dennis Showalter in 1998 while attending the US Air Force Academy. This book is very important for a number of reasons...

First, let's not pull any punches: Perrin's historiographical method is poor. Perrin didn't speak Japanese, and largely fails to discuss one key to Japan's successful "giving up the gun" was that Tokugawa had unified the country and eliminated the impetus for warfare that existed prior to the Shogunate.

That said, the book is really an in-depth exploration of the ability of society to effectively "turn back the clock," to set aside an available and known technology due to a cultural preference. In the end, Japanese society consciously chose to set aside the gun in favor of a less "efficient" form of military killing that better suited their desire to maintain the class and cultural status quo. Specifically, samurai found that their heroic stature on the battlefield, their cultural significance, and their place in Japan's feudal hierarchy were endangered by a weapon such as the gun that effectively leveled the playing field and allowed plebeian marksmen to mow them down at will. Because of their leverage within the Shogunate, and because of the prevailing desire to maintain cultural "harmony" by the elites, the gun was effectively marginalized.