Tanegashina
– The Japanese Matchlock
By
Clive Sinclaire
Lying
to the south of one of Japan’s main islands of Kyushu, are the Osumi
straights, in which the island fief of Tanegashima is located. In 1543, a storm
tossed Chinese junk, manned by trader / pirates, docked to re-provision and
three Portuguese adventurers, the first westerners to visit Japan, came ashore
armed with state-of-the-art acquebuses. The ruling daimyo of the fief, Lord
Tokitaka, witnessed with amazement one of the Portuguese shoot a duck in flight
and immediately organised himself shooting lessons.
Eventually Lord Tokitaka was able to buy two guns at an enormous price from the Portuguese, which he immediately gave to his local swordsmith to reproduce. This should not have been a problem as Japanese craftsmen were skilled at woodwork and especially at the necessary metalwork needed to make a gun. However, the spring mechanism on the breech proved impossible for the swordsmith, Yatsuita Konbei, to reproduce. To overcome this problem, so the story goes, they had to wait for several months before a Portuguese ship again docked at Tanegashima. Yatsuita persuaded his attractive 17 year old daughter to “befriend” the ship’s armourer and so with Japan’s first recorded incident of industrial espionage, the problem was solved and this popular story was born.
Samurai
watches Portuguese loading and using their teppo
Within
a year, Tokitaka had at least 10 guns successfully made and before long they
were being manufactured throughout the country. Meanwhile the Lord was training
all his vassals to shoot “from far and wide and out of every 100 shots they
fired, many could hit the target 100 times” – Teppo-ki
or History of Guns.
Known at first as Tanegashima (after the original place or origin) they later came to be known as Teppo and as Japan was in the throes of continuous civil war (the Sengoku Jidai) the arrival of such an efficient weapon was most timely. They were quickly adopted by the warring factions and were decisive in a number of important battles. Many will have seen the Kurasawa film “Ran”, in which the proud and previously unbeatable Takeda clan’s cavalry gloriously charged the massed ranks of Oda Nobunaga’s artillery which fired sustained volleys and decimated the cavalry to a man. The actual battle of Nagashino took place in 1575 and Oda’s army totalled 30,000 including 10,000 of these being low ranking conscripts, armed with Teppo of which 3,000 were elite marksmen. This clearly shows the speed with which the new technology was taken up, only 32 years after it was first introduced. It is also clear that the generals had mastered both strategy and tactics.
Ashiguru
with their simple and basic armour
As may be seen above, those trained in the use of Tanegashima were usually of a lower rank than that of Samurai. Most were peasants or farmers who were recruited into the armies of the various war-lords and they were known as Ashiguru or foot- soldiers. Lightly armoured, they carried only a single sword, their Teppo and its accoutrements. They could easily be trained to shoot well in only a few weeks, which contrasted with the many years of training in swordsmanship, that a samurai might have experienced. They were considered as social inferiors by the samurai class but their effectiveness, especially when skilfully deployed, was unquestionable. To the haughty samurai class, it was distasteful that such a low person could easily kill one of more exalted rank, from a considerable distance and with little risk to themselves. Therefore, skill with a gun was not a gentlemanly thing whilst skill with the sword, suited their social status. Several high ranking warriors paid the ultimate price for their misguided disdain for firearms. A famous instance was a certain Lord Mori Nagayoshi, who at the age of 27 in 1584, insisted on riding out in front of his troops and waving his sword to inspire them. Unfortunately, his colourfully laced armour and white jimabori or surcoat, proved an irresistible target for an anonymous marksmen who took careful aim and put a deadly accurate ball into his head! Inevitably, however, a significant number of the samurai class were able to compromise with these high ideals and own a Teppo.
A
higher ranking samurai with better armour, dressed for wet weather loading, his teppo, ramrod in his mouth.
The
production, which started in Tanegashima, moved up through Kyushu and was taken
up by several of the powerful clans there, including those of Satsuma and Hizen
provinces. It was not long before many clans throughout Japan retained their own
gun makers as well as sword makers. In 1554, another group began production in
Sakai, near Osaka. This group was renowned for the quality of their locks and
the decorative brass inlay on their stocks and it is understood that they also
received commissions from other gun makers or daimyo, to finish previously made
barrels. A third group of gun makers, known as the Kunitomo, was founded in the
Kyoto area in 1560 and it was they who are said to have supplied the armies of
Oda Nobunaga before the battle of Nagashino.
Of
course, as may be expected, the introduction of firearms onto the Japanese
battlefield had great impact on the armour of the day. At this time, there were
many influences from Europe, with missionaries in the vanguard and traders close
behind. European armour was modified into the Japanese style, the main
difference being that the cuirass (Jap – dō) became made of a single
solid and thick plate, more effective than the laminated older version against a
lead shot. Spanish morion helmets were also adapted and “Japanified” to go
with the dō. Such armours were known as Nambam-gosoku. (Nambam being
literally translated as “Barbarians from the south!). In my own collection, I have an armour
with an 8 plate cuirass, all of which have been tested to withstand musket fire
but which dates from the 18th century.
Top:
A three barrelled version, unsigned,
2nd:
three barrelled version signed Takakura Jiroku,
3rd:
Unsigned with silver mon
4th
A matchlock cannon
A number of slight variations on the basic design emerged to fulfil specific functions. These may be summarised, as follows:
* Azama-zutsu:
Described as a “loophole” gun for use within a castle wall or from a ship.
Up to 2 meters in length, they need a resting place to aim properly.
* Ban-zutsu: This was a
“numbered” gun, an arsenal issued piece that would be used only by low class
samurai. However, the number which would be inscribed onto either the barrel or
the stock, seldom exceeded double figures and was usually 1.3 meters in length.
* Chu-zutsu:
This was a “medium sized” gun that might be used as a personal firearm by a
samurai of some rank and was popularly known as the “gun of the samurai”.
* O-zutsu: Literally
“large gun”, this shot balls from 25 to 89 mm in diameter. This was
impossible to shoot without using both hands.
* Tan-zutsu: A pistol
style of gun that was shot with one hand.
* Bajou-zutzu:
Essentially a carbine that was designed to be used from horseback but
there were great problems with both reloading and shooting with one hand. It
usually ranged in length from 50cm to 60cm.
There is no doubt that the rapid adoption and production of the Tanegashima was greatly helped by the samurai’s eagerness to find ever more efficient ways of killing each other, but this was greatly facilitated by the advanced metal and woodworking techniques already possessed by Japanese craftsmen. Only three basic skills were required to make a matchlock; that of a blacksmith to make the barrel, a metal worker to make the lock and a wood worker to make the stock.
An
impossibly large hand-gun on a kabuki poster
The
barrel was a relatively easy matter for a swordsmith or armour maker. A hot
steel slab was wrapped around another steel bar and sealed at the seam. The
central bar was then removed leaving a roughly finished hollow barrel. If
required the process could be repeated by wrapping the outer steel around the
core but starting at the other end than previously, thus producing a more robust
barrel
If
the gunsmith was reasonably skilled, the making of a basic gun could be
accomplished quite quickly. However the finishing work could easily take the
same amount of time again. This involved fitting all the components together,
polishing the outer surfaces and finally polishing the inside of the barrel with
a long slender burnishing pin.
Unlike
a Western stock, which would be made to be mounted onto the shoulder, the stock
of the Tanegashima is held against the cheek and is shaped more like a pistol
grip than a musket. It is thought that this might possibly be due to those first
pieces seen at Tanegashima, having been sporting pieces with this shape which
continued to be copied. Another theory is that the shape suits their use with
Japanese armour, which has shoulder plates (sode) which would prevent shoulder
mounting. It was made of Japanese
oak and often a ramrod was made from the same piece of wood.
Many things made in Japan for purely practical reasons, are incredibly skilfully designed and decorated and this applies equally to Tanegashima. The decoration on barrels, sometimes signed with the maker’s name, is similar in both design and application to that of tsuba. Similar soft metals, such as brass, copper, silver and gold are employed and designs often included family mon (heraldic design), inlaid dragons, religious symbols and floral designs. Where family mon were used, these might be reproduced on auxiliary articles such as powder flasks and ammunition bags. Sometimes such designs are considered to have been added later to enhance the value of the piece.
An over-and-under version of a
pistol
The
use of the Tanegashima was viewed in a similar way to the other martial arts and
a number of schools were founded to teach the proper use of the weapon. The best
known of these, called the Inatomi school, produced illustrated instruction
manuals which included invaluable advice such as:
Instructions
also include good shooting manners and safety procedures whilst the
illustrations show some interesting and unusual shooting positions. These vary
from regular mounted, standing and kneeling positions to the more unusual
position of the shooter lying on his back supporting the barrel on his knees.
Another shows a standing position with legs crossed, purporting to be an
effective way to shoot on uneven ground. All of these illustrations depict the
shooter clad only in a loin cloth to demonstrate the exact position of the body,
unencumbered by clothing which would make this less clear. The Inatomi also gave
advice on how to shoot according to the time of the day, season, place and
environment, all factors which might influence the effectiveness of the powder.
In common with other schools, the Inatomi made long distance shooting, their main discipline, which has led to speculation that the Japanese matchlock was often used as a defensive weapon from behind castle walls. However, some claims of the effectiveness of Tanegashima over extreme distances, are thought impossible in reality, but they may have been included to provide aspiring marksmen with a challenge to his mental and spiritual abilities, and a desire to exceed normal limitations.
Inatomi
instructions of crossing the legs for shooting on uneven ground
The
actual range and efficiency of Tanegashima are relatively modest when compared
to more modern standards, although a killing range might be some 300 yards
(275m) under ideal conditions. Weather conditions had to be favourable as a
matchlock was notoriously difficult to use in the rain or wind, as the match
used to ignite the primer is easily extinguished. Various covers were made to
combat this but they were unreliable.
In
fact, the Tanegashima only saw battle use by the Japanese for about seventy
years. Apart from the previously mentioned battle of Nagashino in 1575, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in 1592, known as the Bunroku War, numbered some
200,000 men with about 60,000 guns, whilst the second attempt known as the
Keicho War of 1597, which lasted 2 years, 140,000 men carried 50,000 guns. As
the Korean and Chinese enemy had no firearms at all, the Japanese matchlock
wreaked havoc in this rather unequal contest.
Back home in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu fought the famous one-day battle
of Sekigahara, 140,000 men opposed his force of 100,000. Between them they
carried a total of 80,000 guns.
The
last major conflict involving the Tanegashima was the suppression of the
so-called Shimabara rebellion in Hizen province. Several hundred dissident
samurai and peasants, who fought under a Christian banner, holed up in a remote
castle on the Shimabara peninsular and defied the shoguns troops, who eventually
overpowered them. This took place in 1638.
There is no doubt that firearms became little used in the peaceful Tokugawa or Edo period, but many were kept in arsenals by powerful daimyo throughout the country. Some swordsmiths still made guns but they were few in number, reflecting the demand and usage of the time. As the social hierarchy became highly structured at this time, the samurai class being compelled to wear the daisho (2 swords) as their badge of rank, this may have helped to give the Tanegashima its lowly social status, whilst elevating that of the sword. It also has led certain commentators to speculate that there was some conscious and pacific move by the Japanese to “give up the gun” at this time. Rather I think, the lack of many opportunities to employ the weapon (no wars) was the simple and main factor for the decline in their use.
Miniature
pistols with Tokugawa Aoi-mon
Tanegashima
would be taken out of the arsenals and accompany the daimyo’s bi-annual parade
to Edo to pay homage to the shogun. They might also be used for sportive hunting
on occasions.
Whilst
sword styles continued to change throughout this period, the Tanegashima
remained almost exactly as they had been in 1543. Any changes that did occur
were more about ornate decoration than basic structure. Because of its strict
isolation policy, the technical advances in weaponry taking place in the western
world, largely by-passed Japan. It came as quite a shock when Japan was finally
confronted by post industrial revolution weapons in the mid 19th
century as she was forced to open up to western trade at gun-point. It was
patently obvious that the Tanegashima was no match for the Enfield or the
Springfield rifle and that Japan had to adapt or be taken over. She adapted
quickly by employing foreign advisers, Englishmen for the developing Navy and
both French and Prussian troops for the Army. The day of the Tanegashima seems
to have passed with little regret in the frenzy to modernise.
Today, Tanegashima are still shot by enthusiasts and those re-enacting past battles (particularly Nagashino). They also may be seen in the so-called Jidai Matsuri or historical festivals which faithfully re-enact daimyo processions and the like. They are considered quite collectable by western collectors, who are mainly attracted by the skilful barrel decoration. They seem to have reached their peak price a few years ago but a number of convincing modern reproductions appeared and seem to have destroyed the market.
This article was written for and published in Classic Arms & Militaria magazine and both layout and design has been adapted for this website.
My thanks to Japan Sword Co for supplying several of the illustrations.
Clive Sinclaire
Bexley, Kent, UK
May 2008