Tanegashima (gun)

Tanegashima (種子島), most often called in Japanese and sometimes in English hinawajū (火縄銃, "matchlock gun"), was a type of matchlock-configured[1] arquebus[2] firearm introduced to Japan through the Portuguese Empire in 1543.

[3] It was used by the samurai class and their ashigaru "foot soldiers", and within a few years its introduction in battle changed the way war was fought in Japan forever.

[13] Matchlock guns were introduced midway through the period and saw extensive use in the later years of the conflict, playing a decisive role on the battlefield.

In 1549, Oda Nobunaga ordered 500 guns to be produced for his armies at a time when the benefits of firearms over traditional weapons were still relatively questionable to other daimyō.

Although it was [partly] due to there having been a century of peace and the people not being familiar with warfare that this happened, it was really because the Japanese had the use of muskets that could reach beyond several hundred paces, that always pierced what they struck, that came like the wind and the hail, and with which bows and arrows could not compare.

In the Battle of Numajiri (1584), Satake Yoshishige won against Hojo clan, due in part to the use of over 8600 matchlock rifles by their troops.

[24] The internal war for control of Japan was won by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who defeated his rivals at the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600.

[25] However, the social life of firearms had changed: as the historian David L. Howell has argued, for many in Japanese society, the gun had become less a weapon than a farm implement for scaring off animals.

[26] With no external enemies for over 200 years, tanegashima were mainly used by samurai for hunting and target practice, the majority were relegated to the arms store houses of the daimyō.

The samurai era ended in 1868 with the Meiji period; Japan turned to a national conscription army with modern weapons and uniforms.

Tan-zutsu were generally matchlock pistols that due to their inferior range and firepower compared to the ban-zutsu, were not best suited in open field battles and were instead used as status symbols for mounted samurai.

At the advent of firearms, Japanese armies had to come up with reliable ways of repelling the widespread use of guns; whether it would be the creation of full plated and soon bullet-proof armor, bulletproof bundles of bamboo called taketaba or heavy iron pavises.

A gun of this size was typically hard to operate (though varying on the momme), requiring plentiful amounts of gunpowder and proper training.

One of the issues of operating such device was the powerful recoil and the difficulty of transporting, where sometimes larger o-zutsu were either rested on rice bales, hung from trees using ropes, or installed on a carriage (similar to European cannons).