Reddit Reddit reviews Giving Up the Gun

We found 11 Reddit comments about Giving Up the Gun. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Giving Up the Gun
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11 Reddit comments about Giving Up the Gun:

u/matts2 · 13 pointsr/AskHistorians

Easter Island cut down their trees. This meant they could no longer build boats for decent fishing and their food supply dropped. That and some nasty wars meant a big drop in population and so technology.

Japan gave up the gun in the 16th century. It was not a wholesale reversion of technology but it was a step backwards.

There are various particular technologies that have been lost. The Greeks and Romans had a universal joint, but it was mostly lost until the 16th century.

u/sixish · 12 pointsr/korea

This mostly lines up with what I know as well, as a heavy East Asian history student myself.

One thing I want to point out though is that Christian missionaries from the West came much much earlier than the 1800s, in fact, they were there in the 1500s. Francis Xavier, Marco Polo, and many other Portuguese and Spanish explorers/missionaries crossed over via South America and up through the Philippines. Random tidbit of information unrelated to this conflict is that they brought guns to the Japanese and the Japanese adopted them for use and as a nation abandoned them and implemented sakoku, a closed-country policy.


edit: I read about the guns being more advanced than the ones used in World War 1, but after some failed googling I can't find any sources to refute/support my claim. I am certain I read it in a book, perhaps one (1) of (2) these (3), but I am not sure. If you're really interested, I'll contact my professor and ask him which source it was because it's really a ridiculous fact.

u/[deleted] · 7 pointsr/japan

Hmm, I wonder why it's not showing up in the thread... was it reported as spam or something? I'll repost it here then.

I'm going to assume that you're pretty serious about learning more about Japanese history/culture... these are pretty hefty books. I'm also listing them in (roughly) chronological order.

The Tale of the Heike -- It's required reading for all students in Japan and will give you a nice look at Japan's past (12th century). It should be required reading for all Japanese literature students, too. It's basically historical fiction gathered from a number of sources close to that time. There's a lot of history and a lot of embellishment.

Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Relationship to the Sword -- This book covers the creation and fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, but it focuses especially on (surprise, surprise!) the relationship Japan has with the sword (as opposed to the gun). The katana is almost a legendary weapon for a number of reasons, and this book is a good read because it looks at why Japan never really had the same epiphany Europe did with respect to warfare -- or at least, not in the same way.

A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present -- I read this a few times and it's not a bad summary of how Japan changed over the years, though I'm not a huge fan of this book. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted long enough that I feel that it deserves its own (series of) books, followed by one on the Meiji Restoration and another on the post-war period. Since it's all rolled up in one, this ends up being a dense Cliff Notes version of Japanese history. That having been said, though, this is not a bad book at all for what it is.

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II -- I'd probably consider this the definitive post-war Japan book. If you read only one book out of all of these, you should read this one.

Shift: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival -- I consider this a very important modern Japan book, even if you don't give a shit about cars. Japan has always been a very, very closed society and the corporations are no different. So when Carlos Ghosn came in and took over Nissan -- and turned it around -- it was a huge, huge thing. It still is, in many ways. If you want to read something about modern Japan being internationalized, this is one of the books to read.

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan -- This is a pretty famous book for a lot of reasons. Jake Adelstein studied Japanese and became a reporter for the crime section of Yomiuri Shinbun, which is one of the largest newspapers in Japan. He wrote this book; it's filled with dramatization, self-aggrandization, and one-sided reporting, but it's still worth reading. Japan isn't the seamy mess of crime and slavery he makes it out to be, but it's not the technology and beautiful girl paradise a lot of other people want it to be either.


On the "fictional" side of things...

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword -- This was one of the seminal works on Japan, back during World War II. The problem is that there are so many bad assumptions and things that we now know are incorrect... but it was a seminal work for so long that it has really, really affected Western stereotypes of Japan. It's worth it just for that; not as a commentary on Japan itself, but as a critical reading of how the West did (and continues) to see Japan. Use it to focus your critical lens, so to speak.

u/meesan · 4 pointsr/india

Related Wallpaper.

Ancient Ages (BC)

You can actually pick up any history book and see that every ancient civilization reached a zenith beyond which it stopped growing and evolving, becoming complacent in its agrarian economy and eventually becoming a target of invaders who repeated the cycle.

Example: Egyptians, Assyrians, Indus (not much is known as facts, several theories exist), Greeks, (Western) Roman Empire - was destroyed by Huns under Atilla and later invaders, the Muslim/Caliphate/Arabian empire was almost destroyed by Tataric Invasion aka Mongolian Invasion (Mongols under Genghis Khan) etc.

Medieval Ages (5th -15th century AD)

Only in the later Medieval Ages and the Renaissance, when transport and trade became the lifeblood of empires, civilizations no longer were bound by the fertility of their lands. Other factors became the culprit, at the ending years of the Medieval Ages, for the fall of the other kingdoms and empires.

Political instability, unchecked feudalism, scientific stagnation, social collapse, religious-social taboos and might I add arrogant narrowmindedness (as well as the murder of the scientific spirit) were the primary evils which led to the downfall of non-western empires.

Imho, if you want to understand why eastern empires lagged in science and technology, read up on late medieval middle east/arabia and the fall of the caliphate. They were the direct connection to the Indian subcontinent from Europe and their collapse left us disconnected, even isolated.

Industrial Age (1760-1840)

China was efficient enough in the early days of industrialization to not need to industrialize. The same way one can hire cooks and cleaners to keep up their housework, in India, instead of relying on (initially) costlier home and cooking appliances, as in the 1st world nations. It is called Equilibrium Trap.

Japan instead had the Meiji Restoration, under which the Emperor consolidated his power, had an eye-opening encounter with Americans and embraced foreign technology and science to keep up with the world, in 1868. Before that Japan too was regressing in science and technology and blind superiority complex.

Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 should be an interesting read. I've only skimmed first few chapters of it. I found this on my professor's desk while waiting for some appointment.

While (foreign) science was either taboo, dismissed or outlawed by other Asian empires. The first printing press was made in 1468, by Gutenberg while it was instantly outlawed by the clergy in the Ottoman empire, claiming it to be a sin invented by infidels, and was finally allowed in 1727, for non-religious books. The Muslim caliphate/empire had begun it's slow downfall in education and science with the Sacking of Baghdad, by the Mongols, in which entire libraries were set on fire. Countless information was lost in handwritten unduplicable books, many of which were the only copies.


Addendum
Hard work is also in Agrarian economies but, Industrial Work Ethic and Scientific Revolution missed by the other Asian empires have had given them a slower lifestyle.

Sorry, you'll have to look up and see the articles and books for yourself. Remember to read books written by a western author or sources on eastern nations with caution as they are biased and corrupt recorded history, at times. Same goes for eastern writers, who might be oblivious to their own biases.

u/RESERVA42 · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

There is a very interesting book called Giving Up the Gun by Noel Perrin. Read it if you like philosophy of technology.

u/DarthDammit · 1 pointr/history

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0879237732?pc_redir=1408598999&robot_redir=1

Giving up the Gun

Cool book about feudal Japan's mastering of, then subsequent abandonment of firearms.

u/BobasPett · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive
u/maak_d · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook
u/ItsAConspiracy · 1 pointr/Futurology

There's a popular book which claims that the Japanese did make that argument, and gave up the gun for a century. Apparently though it's not all that accurate.

u/citaworvk · -2 pointsr/history

This book is pretty relevant...

http://www.amazon.com/Giving-Up-Gun-Reversion-1543-1879/dp/0879237732

I should also point out that some discredit this work.