SENGOKU AND THE MATCHLOCK
The period before the Tokugawa was called the Sengoku ("fighting country"), which lasted over a hundred years, from the 1460's to the 1590's, and was characterized by constant discord and violence. It began with the Onin Civil War, which was fought due to a dispute over who would be the next shogun, and ended when the Three Great Unifiers-Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, respectively-used military force to consolidate the warring domains under one central government: the Tokugawa Shogunate.
One of the greatest contributors to the unifiers' victories was the European matchlock gun, named Tanegashima by the Japanese. When a ship carrying Portugese explorers was beached on the shores of Tanegashima island in Japan in 1543, the local daimyo lord purchased several of their guns, which used a match to light gunpowder. Over the next decade, numerous improvements were made to the firearms by the Japanese, including a special casing that protected the powder from being ruined by rain or snow. In 1571, Oda Nobunaga used five hundred tanegashima to win the Battle of Anegawa against two rival daimyo, making him the first to successfully use firearms in battle. He and Ieyasu later won the Battle of Nagashino against the powerful daimyo Takeda Katsuyori; Nobunaga used three thousand samurai gunners in several lines so that one line could shoot while the others reloaded. The constant fire overwhelmed the enemy's infantry and cavalry, forcing them to surrender their castle. After the battle, a related daimyo, Takeda Shingen, wrote, "hereafter, the guns will be the most important arms.....therefore, have your most capable samurai men carry guns" (Dyer 52). This prediction was correct; guns were used unsparingly by the samurai of the shoguns and daimyo for the last twenty years of the Sengoku.
When Japan entered a period of peace under the Tokugawa rulers, most of these guns were stored away indefinitely, while some were given to samurai and nobles (peasants were banned from possessing them to prevent revolts or violence) for hunting, target practice, and scaring off wild animals from farms. Samurai swords, which were largely replaced by firearms during the Sengoku, were again popular in the first part of the Edo (C. 1603-1650), during which sword makers moved into major cities such as Edo and Osaka and produced swords for large numbers of samurai, mainly for a decorative purpose. These swords, called Kanbun Katana (see: visual), were less curved than the traditional samurai sword. In later years, however, the demand for samurai swords dropped sharply, mainly due to samurai's poor finances.
One of the greatest contributors to the unifiers' victories was the European matchlock gun, named Tanegashima by the Japanese. When a ship carrying Portugese explorers was beached on the shores of Tanegashima island in Japan in 1543, the local daimyo lord purchased several of their guns, which used a match to light gunpowder. Over the next decade, numerous improvements were made to the firearms by the Japanese, including a special casing that protected the powder from being ruined by rain or snow. In 1571, Oda Nobunaga used five hundred tanegashima to win the Battle of Anegawa against two rival daimyo, making him the first to successfully use firearms in battle. He and Ieyasu later won the Battle of Nagashino against the powerful daimyo Takeda Katsuyori; Nobunaga used three thousand samurai gunners in several lines so that one line could shoot while the others reloaded. The constant fire overwhelmed the enemy's infantry and cavalry, forcing them to surrender their castle. After the battle, a related daimyo, Takeda Shingen, wrote, "hereafter, the guns will be the most important arms.....therefore, have your most capable samurai men carry guns" (Dyer 52). This prediction was correct; guns were used unsparingly by the samurai of the shoguns and daimyo for the last twenty years of the Sengoku.
When Japan entered a period of peace under the Tokugawa rulers, most of these guns were stored away indefinitely, while some were given to samurai and nobles (peasants were banned from possessing them to prevent revolts or violence) for hunting, target practice, and scaring off wild animals from farms. Samurai swords, which were largely replaced by firearms during the Sengoku, were again popular in the first part of the Edo (C. 1603-1650), during which sword makers moved into major cities such as Edo and Osaka and produced swords for large numbers of samurai, mainly for a decorative purpose. These swords, called Kanbun Katana (see: visual), were less curved than the traditional samurai sword. In later years, however, the demand for samurai swords dropped sharply, mainly due to samurai's poor finances.
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