Medieval warriors and warfareThe long- prevailing view, especially among Western historians, was introduced by Delmer
Brown in 1948. Brown maintained that Japanese warfare prior to the 1540s had been character-
ized by hand- to-hand combat among warriors fighting mainly as individuals, but that the adop-
tion and rapid diffusion of firearms sparked a hasty shift from close combat to long- range fighting,
wherein musket fire determined the outcome of most battles before the opposing armies came
into direct contact. This, he said, led to the fielding of much larger armies composed largely of
peasant draftees, the almost complete disappearance of cavalry, increased reliance on castles and
field fortifications, and a revolution in castle construction. In combination, these developments
stimulated industrial and commercial activity and led to the growth of castle towns—both key
components of the transformation to early modern Japan.^43
Brown’s views closely paralleled those of Michael Roberts and other historians of Europe
with regard to the notion of a military revolution that ended the medieval world and helped
create the early modern age. Although it has generated considerable critical rebuttal over the
years, this theory has maintained an enduring hold on historians’ imaginations, as applied to
both Europe and Japan.^44 Most recently, Matthew Stavros averred that the introduction of
firearms to Japan launched a late sixteenth- century military revolution that closely paralleled
contemporary developments in Europe, with similar consequences for social and political
transformation.^45
Perhaps the most intriguing speculation concerning the effects of firearms on Japanese military
evolution linked their introduction to an enhanced role for the sword. This thesis, advanced by
Tominaga Kengo, Imamura Yoshio, Nakabayashi Shinji, and other historians focusing on the
development of kendō (fencing) and other martial arts, argued that firearms rendered even
the heaviest of armors superfluous, leading to a switch to lighter armors, which increased both
the wearer’s speed and agility, as well as his vulnerability to sword strikes. Guns were further said
to have induced opposing hosts to close with one another as rapidly as possible, which, in combi-
nation with the enormous armies of the period, made late sixteenth- century battlefields more
crowded, and thereby forced combatants to engage at closer quarters than ever before. This,
went the argument, boosted the appeal of swords over larger weapons like spears and naginata,
which required more space to wield effectively.^46
The 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, however, witnessed a boom in revisionist scholarship on
sixteenth- century warfare. Among the most important constructs to come under fire were long-
cherished ideas about the role and effect of the introduction of firearms. These attacks have come
from two directions.
One group of historians, including Fujiki Hisashi, Fujimoto Masayuki, Nawa Yumio, Suzuki
Masaya, and Udagawa Takehisa, have analyzed casualty reports, pictorial records, and archeo-
logical data to reconstruct late medieval tactics. This evidence, they conclude, indicates little or
no change in the ratio of wounds caused by bladed weapons to those caused by missile weapons
after the spread of firearms, as well as a pattern of gradual change in tactics and military organiza-
tion stretching across the sixteenth century. Their revised view, then, contends that guns did not
revolutionize Japanese warfare—gunners simply supplanted archers within an already ongoing
tactical and structural evolution—and that hand- to-hand combat with bladed weapons (hakuhei-
sen) did not play a pivotal role in battles.^47
Partly in response to these discoveries, a second group of scholars have reexamined the ques-
tion of when and why late medieval commanders began to adopt new tactical paradigms. Most
point to the late fifteenth century as a turning point. But the real catalyst to change, they argue,
was political, not technological, development. Stephen Morillo, Thomas Conlan and Karl Friday
link changes in the composition of armies and the conduct of battles to developments in political
power and legitimation, administration, taxation, and social structure.^48