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Japanese ashigaru firing hinawajū.Night-shooting practice, using ropes to maintain proper firing elevation. Tanegashima (), 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]
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 ...
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The French-built Matsushima, flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of the Yalu River (1894), used a 320 mm (13 in) Canet gun.. Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan would pursue a policy of "Rich country, strong army" (富国強兵), which led to a general rearmament of the country.
Tsujigiri (辻斬り or 辻斬, literally "crossroads killing") is a Japanese term for a practice when a samurai, after receiving a new katana or developing a new fighting style or weapon, tests its effectiveness by attacking a human opponent, usually a random defenseless passer-by, in many cases during night time. [1]
Ashigaru wearing armor and jingasa firing tanegashima (Japanese matchlocks). Ashigaru (足軽, "light of foot") were infantry employed by the samurai class of feudal Japan.The first known reference to ashigaru was in the 14th century, [1] but it was during the Ashikaga shogunate (Muromachi period) that the use of ashigaru became prevalent by various warring factions.
In 1853, Japan was opened to the West by U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, beginning the Bakumatsu ("end of the bakufu") era. Samurai from the rebellious Chōshū and Satsuma Domains played a major role in the sonnō jōi movement against the Tokugawa shogunate, and later in the Meiji Restoration and Boshin War of 1868, which restored power to ...