Dear Friends,
I may be picking at a scab with this message, but I am very uncomfortable with the way our discussion of Noel Perrine's book developed. I am sorry if my sarcastic style offended anyone. irony can be misdirected. At the same time, I do not feel prepared or disposed to address the chapter and verse of Perrine's book.
What I do feel like doing is fostering a nice friendly conversation about pre-modern Japanese weaponry. Can't we all just get along?
Toward that end please let me present the attached image of a set of gunner's tools I bought in Sendai many years ago.This kit was discovered "in a mountain village" and was offered to me a the tools of a "matagi". The Matagi were essentially commercial hunter who produced hides and bush meat during the Edo period. The mountains of the Tohoku supported lots of these folks who hunted with matchlock guns. In fact lots of rural folksin Tohoku had matchlocks up thru meiji times . The kit shown here also indicates that these hunters ground there own gun powder. These guys were not samurai, but matagi must have operated on the margins of the Daimyo system. In any case, this kit clearly indicates that there were folks in Japan who had not given up the gun.
The existence of kits like this indicates that guns were part of Japanese technological inventory thru the Edo period. The niche they filled was minor - - but present. Separating rural mountaineers' guns from samurai arms is something collectors might want to be able to do.
Peter