With the disturbing rise in mass shootings, I remembered this book that I read in college for some class or another. It was an interesting bit of hidden history. But the portion of the book that explores the gunless age in Japan was rather short.

Instead he traces how Japan tells how Japanese sword makers made up for lost time when guns were introduced by Europeans. Their skill soon surpassed their European counterparts. So it wasn't a rejection of a technology they couldn't handle. Rather it was a rejection of the distance that guns introduced to battle. Honor and individual prowess are two traits highly valued in Japanese culture. The gun had neither.

Good read but I wish it was longer.

Short but interesting!

Required reading for World History in college - very interesting.

A very interesting short study of the use of firearms in Japan: why did they, after adopting them in the 16th century with great success, stop using them (a lot to do with aristocratic culture), and how (the Tokugawa shogunate managed to establish a single centralized manufactury and government monopoly, which could be shut down, plus widespread disinterest meant that no one was really trying to break the monopoly). The author points out that Japan was by no means "backward" during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, developing non-military technology of all sorts, and enjoying great prosperity along with peace and beauty. He wishes western readers to realize "First, that a no-growth economy is perfectly compatible with prosperous and civilized life. And second, that human beings are less the passive victims of their own knowledge and skills than most men in the West suppose."

this is so sadly ironic. it was written in the 70s and now...Fukusima.

This was an interesting look at how Japan gave up an entire form of technology in the 17th century. While Perrin is no expert on Japan, and his overall observations about technology are a little dated, he is a superb writer who makes his arguments effectively and with passion.