Chinese Smugglers, Bladed Weapons, and Samurai Myths in 18th-c. Japan Dr. Noell Wilson 4:00 p.m., Monday, April 20, 2015 305 International Center, Michigan State University Fukuoka forces firing on Chinese ships near Shirajima, folding screen, ca. 1730. What can the use of weapons reveal about a society’s politics and culture? How does the social and military elite’s selection of preferred weapons connect to political privilege? In the case of Tokugawa Japan, universal historical questions such as these have primarily been explored through analysis of bladed arms such as the sword and halberd. A persistent misconception about early modern samurai is that they rejected the use of firearms in favor of edged weapons. However, soldiers assigned to coastal defense regularly used shore-mounted cannons and hand-held firearms to guard Nagasaki harbor and other western waters. This talk explores how the use of coastal guns revises our understanding of the samurai in eighteenth-century Japan, revealing that successful naval skirmishes with Chinese smugglers granted select warrior clans political influence on an unprecedented scale. Noell Wilson is Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi and the author of Defensive Positions: The Politics of Maritime Security in Tokugawa Japan (forthcoming in 2015 with Harvard University Press). Sponsored by the MSU Asian Studies Center and the Department of History with the generous support of the Japan Foundation. asia.isp.msu.edu Tel. (517) 353-‐1680 E-‐mail [email protected]