Abstract
This article tries to examine global weapons trade between the United States and Japan in the late 1860s. The first half of it, Chapter 1, introduces Japanese recent studies and explains the kinds and numbers of western style rifles brought into Japan in the Meiji Restoration. The second half, Chapter 2, considers a German recent Japanology (Japanologie), “The Global Weapons Trade and the Meiji Restoration: Dispersion of Means of Violence in a World of Emerging Nation-States” written by Harald Fuess. As a result of it, Chap. 2 unravels a part of the flow of western arms within Japan at that time. The remaining subject is to unravel the whole picture of global arms transfer flows and to bridge the gap between global history and national histories.
