Japanese Gun Discussion

[Malthus]

From the TV thread hijack getting out of control:

The Tokugawa shogunate won because Kobayakawa Hideaki and his 15,000 soldiers, holding the higher ground on Mount Matsuo and Ishida Mitsunari's right flank, changed sides and rolled down into Otani Yoshitsugu's flank at Sekigahara, with swords and spears.

Unless you are thinking about Nagashino and the image of Takeda cavalrymen and infantry being mowed down by rolling volleys like it was the Somme. This is a myth. At most the Oda-Tokugawa had 3,000 gunners (and even that number is under question), protected behind fences and moats aiming to break and funnel advances, but they still needed to be supported by spears. The use of the guns at Nagashino was to keep a rotating fire to break the cohesion of advancing Takeda units, not to mow them down with volleys like machine-gunners. The battle lasted several hours, and Takeda numerical inferiority, bad intelligence, and terrain perpared to counter charges played as much (if not more) in the defeat than gun volleys.

Even the reality of the 'famed' Takeda cavalry is also contested. We now know that horses bred and used during the Sengoku era were in fact too small to support fully-armored humans during charge; they were really oversized ponies. Theory is that cavalry was used more as dragoons than shock units.

This isn't any different from Western armies - all of whom at the time had shot and pike. No-one is claiming that the Japanese "mow them down with volleys like machine-gunners". 

The sword hunt (and the four-class hierarchy that came with it) was proclaimed under Hideyoshi's rule way before Sekigahara. It was the social basis of the bakuhan system that Ieyasu founded his shogunate on, but that didn't in itself ban guns from being used in warfare. It banned peasants (and priests) from being armed for war, and from being warriors altogether. Hence why no more guns for either of them.

In fact, the biggest contribution from Hideyoshi's sword hunt was not disarming the peasantry and closing next-to-all chances of social mobility, but pulling the samurai off their land properties (and local power bases) and cantoning them into castle towns where they were retributed in stipends based not on their land's rice output but estimations of the total economic yield of their assigned fiefs (in koku).

I'm not talking merely of the "sword hunts" (that in any case preceded Tokugawa, as you note). Rather, the elimination of the manufacture and sale of guns in Japan (except for a few luxury pieces). That was done in part though central collection, in part through "sword hunts", and in large part through a centralized licensing system of manufacture - by which all gun-making was licensed through a central body - that then refused to issue many licenses.

The sword never stopped been the main weapon of a samurai. Not before, not during, not after. The gun never was the main weapon of the samurai, shooting guns was left to year-round paid and trained ashigaru. Those either had to choose between returning as peasants and be disarmed, or becoming bottom-feeder samurai with (very low) stipends.

Most samurai after the immediate generations who had experience fighting either in the late Azuchi-Momoyama era or the war in Korea barely knew how to use a sword, let alone a gun. Many of them didn't even know how to fight with a sword at all. They were bureaucrats, courtiers, magistrates, and servants wearing swords as indicator of social status, not unlike the noblesse d'épée of the French Ancien régime.

You appear determined to misunderstand my point. I said "main weapon", not "main weapon of the samurai". Contrary to popular belief, the sword was never the "main weapon" of war in the warring states period - the Japanese, like Europeans, used shot and pike equivalents. Swords were immensely prestigious and symbolic, of course - that was raised to absurd cult-like levels under the Tokugawa.

This is all so wrong.

The Edo bakufu never gave up the gun. That assertion is pseudohistory, based on a single book, published 35 years ago by a romantic Westerner English teacher, with no basis in fact nor credible Japanese sources (since he couldn't read them anyway) to create a narrative frame through which we could "give up the nuke" like the Japanese "gave up the gun".

http://www.sengokufieldmanual.com/2013/02/giving-up-myths-part-i.html

http://www.sengokufieldmanual.com/2013/02/giving-up-myths-part-ii.html

I'll just quote this nugget :



Quote

It would be easy to ignore it, as most of the Japanese history community has done. In Japan, for instance, the Japanese edition of the book was published with a disclaimer in it, stating that the book was "not based on historical events." The book is an anti-nuclear weapons manifesto, masquerading as a history book. The author himself admits he isn't an expert on Japanese history, and can't even read Japanese. And yet, somehow, people not only read this, but I've seen academic presentations where allegedly intelligent individuals are citing his book as a source in their research. This should not be, yet it is.



For various reasons, both political, military, and social, gun production was limited and was severely controled (because, obviously, no more war and no willingness to arm potential rebels with rifles), but stockpiles of both guns and gunpowder were kept, maintained, and stored in armories (and yes, even in tozama daimyo armories, especially the Shimazu who were the first to enter in contact with western guns in 1543).

Once again, you misunderstand my point.

I never said the Japanese literally forgot how to make guns. In fact, I said the exact opposite.  The Japanese continued to make guns as "luxury" goods throughout the Tokugawa (and kept in touch with "Dutch Learning").

What they did was enforce disarmament. They had stockpiles of guns, but no-one trained to use them; they manufactured guns, but only for a tiny luxury market; they knew about western guns (from their Dutch contacts), but did nothing with that knowledge.

The main measure enforcing this was not gun-toting Samurai (who did not exist), but the extreme social conformity imposed by the Tokugawa regime.

Nothing I said was based on your source. 

[Josquius]

Whats the point here?

[Malthus]

Whats the point here?

To move a conversation that started in the Movie and TV thread elsewhere, so those actually interested in Movies and TV would not start flinging digital poo. 

From: http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,4507.30600.html

[The Brain]

So if only the Japanese had had guns...?

[Valmy]

So if only the Japanese had had guns...?

Freedom and democracy would have broken out.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

they guns they had were probably better than a T34 [/sir Hockey]

[mongers]

Any good Japanese films or TV series that include a gunsmith as a major character?

[Josquius]

Any good Japanese films or TV series that include a gunsmith as a major character?

Yae no Sakura's main character is a gunnery instructor's daughter. Keep meaning to watch it but Taigas are a hard slog.



Would be really surprised if there wasn't one with a gunsmith as a supporting character at least