Within my library recently read Noel Perrin’s Giving Up the Gun. The book itself is quite dated in writing, sources, and historiography; however, it is still cited to certain extent within the modern English scholarship of Japanese history. The book is an overview of Japan’s reasons as to why the samurai of old willingly abandoned the firearm and reverted to their medieval weaponry and how that effected and still affects the modern perspective of Japanese martial arts.
Perrin provides five reasons as to why Japan and its samurai class ultimately gave up the gun. They are as follows:
- The samurai themselves felt that firearms “were getting out of hand,” as in, it gave non-samurai units and persons the ability to dispatch a trained samurai with ease. (33)
- Geopolitical, or that Japan demonstrated itself during its Korean Invasions that European colonial powers in the region (mainly Spain) did not dare host their own invasion of the island nation.
- The symbolic nature of the katana, i.e. being the “only embodiment of honor” and “major works of art.” (36)
- A negative reaction to outside ideas. The gun came to the Japanese Islands by way of Portuguese adventurers in 1543 and soon other European traders (Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese) brought Christianity and its missionaries to Japanese shores. Such outside influences could only spell corruption of the Japanese people and society.
- For purely aesthetic reasons. Perrin explained that within Japanese aesthetic theory, “there are some fairly precise rules about how a person of breeding should move his body […] A man using a sword […] is naturally going to move his body in accordance with many of these rules. But a man firing an arquebus is not. He is going to break them.” (42-43)
It is in this final reason that I would like to discuss in this article.
When we look at the martial arts that have come out of Japan, whether it is koryu or gendai budo, we see an added emphasis on form. The form is what differentiates each martial art from every other martial art. In keeping to this form, practitioners learn how to move their bodies in accordance with the needs and conclusions of their chosen martial art. Any deviation from such form is quickly corrected so that the practitioners can retain the uniqueness of said martial art.
What comes after the form? As one would think, the function should come after the form; however, the function may not be part of the aesthetic theory, therefore such functions are downplayed or forgotten while only the form is left. To piggyback on what Perrin stated, part of the function within Japanese warfare during the Sengoku Jidai was the gun. It was devastating then in 1570 as it is now in 2025; it streamlined how one could operate a war machine. In contrast, because a large percentage of samurai felt that the gun was not a weapon for the warrior class – a class that discussed honor in relation to gallant (individual) deeds on the battlefield – the function of a more streamlined war machine was placed in the closet, collecting cobwebs. There was a certain aesthetic to spears, swords, bow and arrow, and equestrianism that fit within the Japanese society ideal. Then, once the civil war ended, the function of such aesthetic weapons and their respective systems found themselves in the closet too with the gun. The function was the form, and the form was to look pleasing to the eye, never mind the legions of samurai who witnessed the reality of functions of warfare. Those battle-hardened samurai, keeping an eye on the future, perhaps saw that the function of what they were teaching was not going to be the main focus. In doing so, such functions were hidden or kept secret from the majority of students and saved for only the few who demonstrated themselves as worthy to the teacher. It is because of this historical minimalistic focus on the function that we as a modern martial arts community have legions of practitioners who do not know or have any idea of what the functions and applications of the forms they teach and train.
In 2025, with so much information at our fingertips, there are many martial artists who emphasize form over function; they emphasize the aesthetics over the application of the form. Anything else besides the demonstrated or codified form is considered to be a heresy that needs to be fashioned back into the agreed upon form or model. Why the gatekeeping? To use an American Kempo Karate analogy, we can string the letters of the alphabet (the various forms) into words and sentences (the function or application) to communicate with the larger world, so why hinder this broader communication with the larger martial arts world?
Take, for example, mixed martial arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and/or judo. Those systems catered towards function over form, mainly to ensure a win for their practitioners and teams. While the sport aspect of these systems have become the primary focus, the fact of the matter is sometimes the function of the prescribed technique may look ugly compared to the aesthetics of the form. But at times, function can be beautiful too, like a fifty-yard pass caught in the endzone to win the Super Bowl. This is function with form.
There is a safety element to martial arts practice, especially in our present day and age. Martial arts, for most, are something they do in addition to their day job and other life responsibilities. No one wants to be out of work or made to stay in a hospital bed because their extracurricular activity resulted in an injury or worse. So, the focus on the forms or the aesthetics becomes their training goal; the function becomes an afterthought, if at all, because function may mean injury to some and a level of validity is lost.
There is something you get when you watch something aesthetically pleasing like dance, movies, or a martial arts demonstration. If done correctly, it is a work of art that can invoke emotion within the beholder. Working to create an aesthetically pleasing piece can be a valid way to train a martial art, however, practitioners need to be aware and bear witness to the functions of the forms and understand what the form is attempting to tell them about the application, the how, and the why. We, as a martial arts community, need to be welcoming to those who want to move forward in their training that focuses on the function of the forms presented. Conversely, those within the martial arts community focusing on the function need to be welcoming to those who only want to focus on the forms rather than the functions because that is where those practitioners are at in their training. For both sides, there should be interaction between both camps, without the need to convert one to the other. Rather, just like teachers at the university level, we should demonstrate and explain the information, and see who has questions at the end. The openness to ideas and their proponents can help bridge the gap between form and function.
Martial Arts of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 