Guns in Japan, 1543-1786: Myths, Secret Traditions, and the Royal Hunt
Anne Walthall
Anne Walthall (Professor of History, University of California, Irvine)
Date: 22 February 2012Time: 7:00 PM
Finishes: 22 February 2012Time: 9:00 PM
Venue: Russell Square: College BuildingsRoom: Khalili Lecture Theatre
Type of Event: Lecture
Series: JRC Annual Tsuda Lecture
Abstract
Did guns first arrive in Japan in 1543? Were they brought by the Portuguese; were they even of western manufacture? What were they primarily used for? And then there are questions regarding evidence for the use of guns at the famous battle of Nagashino, the development of shooting as a martial art, and the connection between shoguns and guns. I argue that by 1600 guns had become naturalized as a weapon of war, as a hunting implement, and as a martial art, but their meaning varied dramatically depending on how they were used and in which setting.
Speaker Biography
After receiving her BA at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Walthall spent three years in Kyoto teaching English conversation before going to graduate school at the University of Chicago where she received her PhD with a dissertation on peasant uprisings in Japan of the 1780s. While teaching history at the University of Utah, she began to study Japanese peasant women, producing a number of articles and, after she moved to the University of California, a book: The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration. Since then she has studied the women who resided in the shogun’s inner quarters from a cross-cultural perspective. She is currently working on the family archives amassed by the Hirata family descended from Hirata Atsutane.
Organiser: Centres & Programmes Office
Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
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