Guns first arrived in Japan in about 1543,
on a boat maned by Asian pirates and a couple Portuguese sailors.
Now, there was only two arquebuses on the boat.
And after a shooting demonstration,
(I believe they shot ducks)
The Lord...
Let me get this right...
Tokitaka!
Lord Tokitaka,(Probably pronouncing that incorrectly)
decided to buy both guns for about 1,000 tails each.
Now, to give a rough estimation on how much that is on price,
in a couple decades time the same guns could be bought for two tails.
So, you can tell that was a hell of a lot of money
And, in their period of civil war,
Japan fell in love with guns afterwards.
Which brings me to were I am now.
I am in Nagashino Castle.
Well... the remnants of the castle .
And also the site of one of the most important battles in Japanese history:
The battle of Nagashino in 1575.
On this day Lord Oda,
who attacked over there on those mountains.
He attacked with about 38,000 men.
10,000 of them were caring guns.
And this came just a few decades after guns first arrived in Japan.
What's more is that, hiding behind wooden walls, they actually fired by rank.
So that's a tactic that was quite ahead of it's time,
and wouldn't go out of date until, WW1 essentially.
And if you want to compare that to European battles at the time,
twenty years later in the Scottish Highlands,
The Battle of Glenlivet
had about 10,000 Scottish Clansmen flee the scene
after being fired upon by a couple cannons.
I think they were defeated by a force of no less...
or no more then 2,000 men.
So to show you that, this was a bloody big battle,
even compared to European standards.
The Japanese love of guns continued to develop for a couple of decades.
So much so that when they invaded Korea, around 1600,
they declared that all men, including samurai, should carry guns.
And they were producing these guns by themselves
So much so that some people estimate
that they were at least making as many guns as European nations some say more.
So?
What happened?
Because, when Japan opened up again, in the 19th century
European and American commentators, commented that their army knew nothing about firearms.
So, why did Japan go from being in love with firearms.
To, not knowing anything about them.
Like with everything there's a couple competing theories.
one theory says that it was peace,
that made them become sort of complacent.
Their country had been united.
They failed to take Korea, so they didn't look to expand anymore.
And the Japanese were still feared warriors.
So nobody sought to invade.
Not even Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese.
Everybody commented that the Japanese were fierce warriors.
So they had no threat of invasion.
And no more civil war.
So, they were at peace and they became a bit complacent.
Another theory says it was the samarai.
And, now the samurai did use gun a lot during the civil wars
but they were worried that they were losing old traditions.
For instance they used to send forward champions into the battlefield, who proclaimed their old victories.
And, they had a very strong connection with their sword
So... they didn't want to lose the sword over the gun.
If that makes sense.
But, if your status and rank relies on your reputation as a fighter,
guns, equalized it .
So they also ran the risk of losing their, rank and social status because of it.
Many Europeans were also fearful of firearms.
for instance Martin Luther called them "Cruel and damnable."
and associated them with the devil.
And many generals, thought that they undermined old swordsmanship.
But the big difference was:
Lords and warriors, within European society,
never really got more then 1% of the population.
where as in Japan, Samurai were about 10% of the population.
So, their demands were listened to, essentially.
And guns were just striped away from the battlefield all together.
But, in a newly unified Japan, Hideyoshi the new leader,
wanted to get rid of all the weapons from his old enemies.
Now these sword-hunts, only got rid of swords.
He didn't consider, the gun to be a weapon at that point.
So guns survived in Japan, but they were largely in the hands of they peasants.
And some samurai used them for hunting as well.
And they weren't seen as weapons of war until the 19th century.
When they were used to crush some uprisings.
And this is after the Europeans and Americans arrive.
So, after the Americans and Europeans arrived,
and after The Boshin Rebellion was crushed largely by peasant hunters,
Japan, realized that guns were good for the army, so started producing them once again.
But, they also realized that, there dangerous in the hands of civilians.
So, they largely outlawed guns from the population in the late 19th century.