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The samurai-zutsu guns were custom-made for use only by the samurai, whose high social standing and wealth meant they could afford well-crafted and intricately designed guns which were longer and of larger caliber, as opposed to the cruder and inferior quality ban-zutsu used by the ashigaru. Samurai-zutsu
Isolation did not decrease the production of guns in Japan—on the contrary, there is evidence of around 200 gunsmiths in Japan by the end of the Edo period. But 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 ...
However, the Japanese were arguably using guns more effectively than their European counterparts by the sixteenth century, as well as producing more accurate, durable varieties. [citation needed] The Battle of Nagashino, where guns were deployed against samurai cavalry, is one of the most famous and influential battles in the history of the ...
It was the assistant's job to decapitate the samurai in one swing; otherwise, it would bring great shame to the assistant and his family. Those who did not belong to the samurai caste were never ordered or expected to carry out seppuku. Samurai could generally carry out the act only with permission.
Tomoe Gozen (巴 御前, Japanese pronunciation: [5]) was an onna-musha, a female samurai, mentioned in The Tale of the Heike. [6] There is doubt as to whether she existed as she doesn't appear in any primary accounts of the Genpei war. She only appears in the epic "The tale of the Heike".
The ninjatō (忍者刀), ninjaken (忍者剣), or shinobigatana (忍刀), [2] is alleged to be the preferred weapon of the shinobi of feudal Japan, described in one 21st-century portrayal as carried on the person's back, specifically horizontally at a height of around that of the person's waist.
Samurai holding a kanabō The kanabō ( 金砕棒 , kanasaibō ) (literally "metal stick" or "metal club") is a spiked or studded two-handed war club used in feudal Japan by samurai . Other related weapons of this type are the nyoibō , konsaibō , [ 1 ] [ 2 ] tetsubō ( 鉄棒 ) , and ararebō . [ 3 ]
But, one of the key advantages of the weapon was that unlike bows, which required years of training largely available only to the samurai class, guns could be used by relatively untrained footmen. Samurai stuck to their swords and their bows, engaging in cavalry or infantry tactics, while the ashigaru wielded the guns. Some militant Buddhist ...