As far as this author is aware, this fact and its significance are not mentioned in any history textbooks in Japan. In fact, it was an American historian, Noel Perrin, who drew attention to it. Perrin wrote. _Long before this, the Japanese had done something unprecedented in world history. Almost four centuries earlier, they had abandoned their study and development of firearms in the Tokugawa era, a long period of peace that has never been enjoyed by any other major country in the world. As far as I know, these circumstances are unique in the history of technology. Now that mankind is trying to control nuclear weapons, Japan_s historical experiment should be a model for the whole world, providing vital encouragement for us in this endeavor. _As a young man, Perrin served as a soldier in the Korean War. When the U.S. (U.N.) army advanced to the Chinese border, he learned that the Japanese army had reached the same border several centuries earlier, making use of the most advanced weapon of the time: guns. This was completely different from the American stereotyped image of the _two-sworded samurai,_ leading Perrin m to wonder why the samurai had not used guns. Almost thirty years later, he published a brief study entitled Giving Up the Gun: Japan_s Reversion to the Sword, 1543_1879 (Boston. David R. Godine, Publisher, 1979), which caused quite a stir when it first came out. Nevertheless, Japanese specialists in the history of firearms responding coolly to Perrin_s study, curtly dismissing it by pointing out a few minor factual errors.
It seems to be an immutable law that the two great revolutions in the history of weapons are the inventions of completely new types of weapon: firearms and nuclear weapons. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Japan was the only non-Western country to succeed in the mass production of weapons and even became the biggest user of firearms in the world. Particularly in the tumultuous Sengoku period, during which Japan was riven by constant civil wars, it had been conclusively demonstrated that the sword was powerless against the gun; yet the Japanese gave up the gun and reverted to the sword. A development that ought never to have occurred in military history thus took place in Japan. The importance of this cannot be emphasized enough.
Noel Perrin gives the following three reasons for Japan_s decision to revert to the sword even though it possessed the materials and know-how to develop the new weapon: (1) Japan wanted to re-establish the code of ethics that had been lost through the use of guns; (2) foreigners had come to perceive Japan as a strong country that would be impossible to invade; and (3) the Japanese felt contempt for Western culture based on then unholy trinity of guns, Christianity and commerce. Although each of these contains an element of truth, this explanation still does not seem entirely satisfactory. Since a nation_s existence depends on its preparedness for war, it is surely implausible to explain such a decision solely in terms of a people_s ethical or aesthetic outlook. All nations have recourse to force as a means of physical compulsion, but there is surely more than one philosophy of government through which nations control (military) force. It is therefore important to compare Japan_s theory of disarmament with the philosophy of military expansion espoused by the nations of Europe, while keeping in mind the case of neighboring China, the foreign country with which Japan was most closely related.
