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Hinawa revolver of the Edo era
Hinawa revolver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edo period - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Who woulda thought of Japanese Samurai carrying these around before Sam colt and the percussion cap fired revolver?
The arquebus, a matchlock gun, was introduced by the Portuguese via a Chinese pirate ship in 1543 and the Japanese succeeded in assimilating it within a decade. Groups of mercenaries with mass-produced arquebuses began playing a critical role.
By the end of the Sengoku Period, several hundred thousand firearms existed in Japan and massive armies numbering over 100,000 clashed in battles.
In 1592, and again in 1597, Toyotomi Hideyoshi decided to invade China (唐入り) through Korea and mobilized an army of 160,000 peasants and samurai.(See Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, 朝鮮征伐.) Taking advantage of its mastery of the arquebus, Japanese samurai made major gains in most of Korea (Kato Kiyomasa did in fact enter Manchuria, but withdrew when it was clear he had outpaced the rest of the Japanese invasion force), but were unable to advance all the way through Korea into China due to the Japanese navy's defeats at sea at the hands of the Korean navy (resulting in the Japanese supply lines being severed) and the entry of Ming Chinese troops into Korea. A few of the more famous samurai generals of this war were Katō Kiyomasa, Konishi Yukinaga, and Shimazu Yoshihiro.
Oda Nobunaga revolutionized musket tactics in Japan by splitting loaders and shooters and assigning three guns to a shooter at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. (Popular records stating he used a Maurice-style three-line formation are incorrect according to onsite evidence.) While many believe that during the Sakoku the political power of the samurai led to muskets being banned in Japan, this is a misconception brought on by romantic views. In actuality, the Japanese were fully capable of manufacturing their own muskets, and the shogunate even created several political positions to oversee their manufacture and inventory. These guns would be widely used during Hideyoshi's unification of Japan and later the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592.
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single shot gun
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