Preconceptions about Japan proved wrong
When I came to live in Japan back during the first Bush Presidency, I brought many things with me, including a suit, long underwear, and extra shoes, since I was sure I couldn’t find my size here (turns out I had nothing to worry about there). I also brought a suitcase full of preconceptions about what life in Japan would be like, many of which turned out to be wrong.
First of all, I expected Japan to be a fairly un-religeous place, but when I got here, I was immediately invited to attend the Japanese Baptist church in our city, where I learned that studying by reading the Old Testament in Japanese is very, very hard. I was also surprised at the existence of Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out local versions of The Watchtower and polite Mormon missionaries riding mountain bikes while wearing ties, which they’re famous for here.
I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t encounter any guns, since everyone knows that there are no guns in Japan, right? Imagine my surprise when a Japanese friend of mine who built high-performance racing bicycles turned out to be a hunting aficionado who owned several new and antique Remington rifles. Getting a license for a gun in Japan is very difficult, and prospective owners must undergo several months of training in their use and safety and be able to pass background and vision checks, but gun owners do exist here.
I guess that’s the way of it: for every impression you have of something, there are always counter-examples, waiting to prove you wrong.
Oh wow. I knew they had Baptists and such, but I’ve never heard of the whole owning gun thing. That’s pretty cool.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:58 pmI read there are something like 450,000 registered guns of all types, compared with 128 million rifle/long guns and 64 million hand guns in the U.S. Kind of hard to wrap one’s mind around that.
June 12th, 2008 at 9:52 pmWhen we were visiting my wife’s family on Shikoku Island, a restaraunt owner pounded me with questions on ammunition (caliber, grain, etc.)
Later on I saw a man going hunting. He had a typical pick up truck with a gun rack and he was wearing hunting gear. The hunting gear was marked with a hunting club logo.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:11 pmI too once visited the in-laws in rural Shikoku and came upon a bilingual sign that read: “Gun-hunting prohibited area. Tokushima Prefecture”. That somebody felt that it was necessary to put up such a sign caught me a bit off-guard at the time.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:26 pmPerhaps everyone might be interested to know that in the 1500s, there were more guns in Japan than any other country on the planet.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:16 amThat’s interesting Edward. I did not know that but considering Japan’s proximity to China, do you think that had an influence on the number of guns or was it influence from the west? Considering Japan’s Samurai traditon, it makes sense but I don’t think those guns were particularly accurate at that time? What do you think?
June 13th, 2008 at 5:51 amI believe Nobunaga was the first to really start bringing guns as well as Christianity into Japan, importing both from the Portuguese primarily into his army to try to unify the country. The guns weren’t terribly accurate, but still gave Nobunaga a major advantage over his enemies. But by the time Hideyoshi pretty much did unify Japan in the late 1500’s both were seen as severe threats to his rule and he mostly eliminated from Japanese society Cristianity for a long time and guns (and even swords) for good, that part being a policy that has maintained that rigorousness for some 400 years.
That being said, I was actually more surprised to learn that swords (which, in addition to being somewhat less dangerous, have a stronger cultural association in the country than guns) are about as tightly controlled as guns are there.
While they’re something resembling okay with rifles, Japan put their foot down on handguns. From Second Amendment Project:
“Small calibre rifles were once legal, but in 1971, the Government forbade all transfers of rifles. Current rifle license holders may continue to own them, but their heirs must turn them into the police when the license-holder dies. Total remaining rifle licenses are 27,000″
so basically, small calibre owners are being quarentined into extinction…..
June 13th, 2008 at 7:01 amAnd guns used to be called “Tanegashima” because that’s the island where the Portuguese first arrived and started trading them.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:06 pmJapanese quickly began making their own firearms after importing some from the Portuguese. Some feel they were of better quality than the Western versions. Nobunaga won because he did the best job at integrating firearms units into his forces (the reason people originally lined up to shoot is to counter the accuracy problem, IIRC).
Swords today have to be registered with the authorities, but its really not that hard to do. You don’t have to get licensed as a person. I’m sure there are at least hundreds of thousands of registered swords in Japan.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:38 pm