Changes

In the early 19th century, the shogunate began to worry about the amorphous imagined threat of "[[akuto|bad guys]]" - including [[ronin|rônin]], jobless commoners, and the like - hoarding weapons and planning violence or other criminal activities. Numerous edicts banned peasants from engaging in martial activities, including firing practice. Surveys uncovered a considerable number of "hidden" unregistered guns in peasant villages, most of them being kept in plain sight and (we might presume) used in a normal fashion, but simply not properly registered, as a result of the complexities of shogunal requirements on these matters. The shogunate thus gained a more solid, or accurate, impression of how many guns were in circulation, and confiscated many of them, reducing the number available to undesirable elements (as well as to upright citizens). Villagers took matters into their own hands, as well, setting booby traps and the like, and arming themselves against bandits and marauding gangs of ''rônin''.

In the early 19th century, the shogunate began to worry about the amorphous imagined threat of "[[akuto|bad guys]]" - including [[ronin|rônin]], jobless commoners, and the like - hoarding weapons and planning violence or other criminal activities. Numerous edicts banned peasants from engaging in martial activities, including firing practice. Surveys uncovered a considerable number of "hidden" unregistered guns in peasant villages, most of them being kept in plain sight and (we might presume) used in a normal fashion, but simply not properly registered, as a result of the complexities of shogunal requirements on these matters. The shogunate thus gained a more solid, or accurate, impression of how many guns were in circulation, and confiscated many of them, reducing the number available to undesirable elements (as well as to upright citizens). Villagers took matters into their own hands, as well, setting booby traps and the like, and arming themselves against bandits and marauding gangs of ''rônin''.

Firearms, used by peasants throughout most of the Edo period as equipment for hunting or protecting their land from animals, thus regained their identity as weapons by the 1840s or so. In the final years of the shogunate, the authorities began to muster groups of peasants already skilled with firearms and to use them as local patrols; some were even trained in the use of cannon. Such peasant gun squads were also used to help suppress the [[Tenguto Rebellion|Tengutô Uprising]] in [[1864]].

Firearms, used by peasants throughout most of the Edo period as equipment for hunting or protecting their land from animals, thus regained their identity as weapons by the 1840s or so. In the final years of the shogunate, the authorities began to muster groups of peasants already skilled with firearms and to use them as local patrols; some were even trained in the use of cannon. They were, at times, invited to simply take matters into their own hands, or implicitly deputized, to use their weapons to defend their communities against "bad guys"; organized peasant gun squads were also used to help suppress both samurai uprisings such as the [[Tenguto Rebellion|Tengutô Uprising]] in [[1864]], and peasant uprisings such as the [[Bushu ikki|Bushû Uprising]] in [[1866]].

 

==Notes to the Text==

==Notes to the Text==