Samurai Sunset at Nagashino Plain: The Gunfire Storm That Changed Japan's History

The chance arrival of several Portuguese merchants on a Japanese island in the 16th century and a costly deal over two simple firearms sparked a military revolution that, within a few decades, brought the lifelong mastery of the samurai to its knees and changed the history of warfare in the Land of the Rising Sun forever.

According to ambassador Arjan; When gunpowder weapons first made their way to feudal Japan, they revolutionized warfare and upended nearly four centuries of established military practices and structures. Before that, samurai culture and tactics were a mix of ritual combat, archery, and swordplay. The introduction of rifles set off an arms race in which large numbers of soldiers and mass production of munitions trumped individual skill and lifelong training.

How did a shipwreck bring firearms to feudal Japan?

The history of Japan was changed forever on August 25, 1543 [2 September 922]; The day when the Portuguese traders aboard a ship of wokus were shipwrecked and the water washed them ashore on the island of Tangashima, south of Kyushu. The European weapons on board caught the attention of the ruler of Tangashima, Tangashima Tokitaka. He was amazed at how well the firearms ignited the gunpowder. Tokitaka bought two wick arquebuses at a staggering price; The price is said to be around 2,000 silver rio. Realizing the advantage these weapons could provide his troops in battle, he immediately ordered his chief swordsmith, Yaita Kinbei, to reproduce their design.

Japanese swordsmiths were very skilled at forging the steel and making the blade, but making the threaded end cap was surprisingly difficult. Some legendary accounts say that Kinbi was so desperate to learn the secret of the screw that he married his daughter, Wakasa, to a Portuguese sailor and gained the necessary technical knowledge in return.

Less than two decades after the introduction of these weapons, production centers in Sakai and Kunitomo and a few other places were producing matchlock rifles by the thousands. By the late 16th century, Japan probably had more firearms than any single European country; Japan had also produced tens of thousands of rifles until the beginning of the 17th century.

How did matchlock guns change Japanese warfare?

Before the introduction of the matchlock rifle, a warrior's effectiveness on the battlefield depended on years of continuous training and practice. It took years of practice to properly draw Yumi's long and asymmetrical bow, aim and release the arrow. In those days, high-level martial skills were passed down from generation to generation within strict families, keeping power in the hands of the samurai class. The fuse gun worked with a slow-burning fuse that ignited the gunpowder in the pan and fired the lead bullet. This simple mechanism allowed an ordinary peasant infantry to defeat armored opponents with only a few days or weeks of training.

A master archer could fire several arrows in the time it would take a rifleman 20 to 30 seconds to load and fire a shot. However, it was possible to train thousands of peasants and build an efficient army at a much lower cost. As a result, the battle tactics of the Sengoku era, or era of Japanese civil wars, changed from hand-to-hand combat to the organization and direction of regular volleys of fire. Oda Nobunaga, one of the first to try to unify Japan and realize the true power of firearms on the battlefield, procured 500 muskets for his infantry units in 1549.

Why did the Battle of Nagashino prove that samurai cavalry was obsolete?

The greatest example of the effectiveness of the fuse gun was seen on July 28, 1575, at the Battle of Nagashino. The united forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu faced the mounted warriors of the Takeda dynasty; A family whose cavalry had a wide reputation. About 12,000 to 15,000 Takeda warriors attacked the Shitaragahara plain in successive waves to crush the enemy ranks with cavalry.

Against them, some 3,000 of Nobunaga's musketeers were stationed behind stepped wooden barriers. To compensate for the slow rate of fire of the fuze rifles, Nobunaga organized his riflemen in three lines to take turns firing and continuously fire on the enemy. When the charging cavalry reached the obstacles, they were met with continuous volleys of musketry and suffered heavy casualties. About 10,000 of Takeda's forces were killed; including a large number of their most experienced commanders. The tactic used at Nagashino seriously challenged the belief that traditional samurai cavalry could survive concentrated fire and gradually changed the nature of samurai warfare.

Why did Japanese rulers ban firearms, and disarm ordinary people?

One of the effects of firearms on Japanese society was that it facilitated the phenomenon of gekokujo; A phenomenon in which the subalterns dominated the subalterns in terms of rank. Suddenly, an Ashigaru foot soldier with a simple rifle could defeat an experienced samurai with advanced fighting skills. This situation forced the political class to act to curb the problem. Soon, the ownership of weapons was restricted to ordinary people. Edicts such as the 1588 Edict, which prohibited peasants from owning swords, guns, and other weapons of war, helped the rulers maintain Japan's class system. During the Edo period in Japan, from 1603 to 1868, the shogunate tightly controlled the production and distribution of firearms.