Matchlocks In Japan
Not long after, news about the weapon began to spread towards other parts of
Japan. In 1545 the lord of Bungo on Kyushu, called Otomo Yoshiaki heard about the
weapon and requested a demonstrating of the musket (Lidin 2002, 6). Otomo also
became impressed by the power of the weapon and as a result, muskets were included
on its military arsenal. However, the gunwas presented with some technical
problems, which was not reliable to be used in the wars. One of those problems
was that it could not perform properly in rain. But the Japanese generals soon were
able to find a solution for it, even before the Portuguese generals (Perrin 1979, 17).
They created a sequential firing technique in order to accelerate the flow of the
bullets. Also, to increase... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
But it had also changed the ways wars were conducted, as with the advance and
power of guns, old styles of weapons were being slowly abandoned. In 1549 Oda
Nobunaga, the military Lord, who with the successor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was
successfully able to unified Japan under one strong central government (Brown
1948, 238). Requested an order of five hundred matchlocks to gunsmiths called
Kunitomo (Brown 1948, 238). In 1575, in the battle of Nagashino, Nobunaga had
an army of approximately 70,000 men, and 3,000 of them were equipped with
matchlocks (Brown 1948, 238). Its army was a combination of swords and guns,
as at that time they could effectively build tactics using both. Thus, the use of
firearms was quickly spread. In 1582 by the time of Nobunaga death, possibly one
third of Japans soldiers, who were leaded by military barons, were equipped with
firearms (Brown 1948, 238). Also, the victories earned at the begging of the
Korean invasion, were largely due to the fact that the Japanese army were
equipped with muskets, while the Korean didn t acquire these types of weapons
(Brown 1948). The three unifier of Japan Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Leyasu made
an extensive use of guns in their battles. Therefore, it can be said that guns played a
key role in the unification of Japan as well as in the 1592 1598 invasions of Koreans
(Brown