Tanegashima Teppou (種子島鉄砲) - "Sinking" the myth!

Tanegashima Teppou (種子島鉄砲) - "Sinking" the Myth!

A "Black Ship" (黒船), the symbol of the European contact with Japan - from a painting of the 17th century.

The Tanegashima shipwreck is among the world's famous shipwreck in history, and it was crucial for the history and future of Japan during the Sengoku period.

During a storm on 23 September 1543, a Chinese junk was forced to seek shelter on the shores of Tanegashima, an island ruled by Tanegashima Tokitaka who was a vassal of the Shimazu.

Inside the ship, the first Europeans landed on Japan and brought with them a revolutionary weapon which was never been used before on Japan and was about to change the way that battles were fought.
From Tanegashima, these brand new imported technology reached the Japanese warlords all over the country and allow some of them to unify the nation under their banners!

A nice story, isn't it?
It is actually a well known fact that enjoy a lot of attention even among academics studies, it is possible to read it in museum, history books and inside amateur's blogs like this one.

But the problem is that it is not a fact.
It is a story, and with this article I wanted to spread some lights and get rid of most of what I called the "Tanegashima myth".

The first European in Japan, made by Hokusai (北斎) in the 19th century

I don't want to spend more lines writing about the story itself, since there is already plenty of literature on the Internet and on books, but before attempting to debunk it, I want to clarify few things:
I don't have issues with the Tanegashima myth itself, but what I find annoying and misleading is the whole context in which the story is interpreted, namely the fact that: Japan didn't have first hand experience with firearms prior to the 1543 and that Tanegashima played a crucial role for the production and for the spreading of the Japanese Teppou, the matchlock type arquebus.

Japanese experience with firearms prior to the 1543

The first encounter with gunpowder weapons, from the 蒙古襲来絵詞

What I personally find interesting is the fact that although the mainstream Tanegashima theory is widely accepted, at the same time it is a well known fact that the first contact with gunpowder based weapons by the Japanese was during the Mongol Invasion of Japan, where iron cased bombs were thrown against the Samurai of the 13th century.
Ironically, according to the intensive studies of prof. T. Conlan on the Mouko Shuurai Ekotoba (蒙古襲来絵詞), the iconic emakimono which describes the invasion, the explosive iron shell depicted there where added on a later date.

Nevertheless the existence of these weapons were confirmed both by literary and archaeological evidences.

Two Teppou (written in Hiragana characters てっぽう) also known as Tetsuhau found near Takashima. In China they were called thunder crash bomb (震天雷).

These weapons were soon adapted by the Japanese in the 14th and 15th century, when we also see the development of a weak cased structure known as thunderclap bomb. The usage of these bombs was recorded by the Hekizan Nichiroku (碧山日録) during the Ounin war in the 15th century, when the bombs were thrown against enemy lines with catapults.
However, they saw their best usage during naval warfare in the 16th century, as recorded by the Shinchoukoki (信長公記), since ships were made primarily of woods and these devices were used to spread fire on them.

The experience of gunpowder weapons in Japan didn't stop at bombs.
It has been speculated that during the Mongol Invasion, some type of primitive hand held firearms were used against the Japanese, since similar devices were used by the Mongol in 1287 (only 7 years after the second invasion), but there aren't evidences supporting this thesis.
It was mainly after the re-establishment of trading relationship with Ming China in the 14th and 15th century that a new wave of military technology brought by the mainland hit the country of the rising sun.
On the eve of the aforementioned Ounin war, a Ryukyuan official visit in 1466 made use of teppou to fire in the air, as recorded by a buddhist monk, to impress the Ashikaga court in Kyoto.
In the Hekizan Nichiroku, which deal with the account of that war, we could read that: " Within the camp of Hosokawa Masayuki they were equipped with hihou and hisou".
Hihou (飛爆) refers to "flying bomb", which were already discussed, but hisou (火槍) means fire lance or fire spear.

These weapons were essentially the forerunner of the gun, and were used against Sino-Japanese pirates during the mid 14th century.
It has been speculated a lot about the true nature of these fire lances used in Japan during the mid 15th century, but the lack of surviving examples and pictorial evidences deny any effective conclusion.

It is accepted however that from now on, early handgonnes or small hand held cannons were used in Japan.

A small hand cannon from Japan, dated 1325. This museum piece was sold on an auction.

The next step in the development of firearms in Japan is the 1510, when a monk from Odawara brought a matchlock arquebus imported from China under the eyes of Houjou Ujitsuna; this episode was recorded in the Houjou Go Dai Ki (北条五代記).
The same weapon reached the Takeda in 1525.

The nature of this newly imported gun has been discussed over the years; some claim that it was a form of Chinese matchlock, others argued that it was a South East Asian modified version of an Ottoman arquebus.
Soon the Houjou started to makes copies of this weapon, and they actually see some usage in the field of the early Sengoku period, in the battle of Uedahara as recorded by the Takeda chronicles. 
Although the general opinion on  early arquebus is that they were somewhat inaccurate and not as reliable as later Portuguese versions, it is worth to notice that in both cases (either the gun was Chinese or Ottoman) those firearms didn't perform worse than the Portuguese ones, especially since the Chinese version was itself an adaptation of the Portuguese arquebus!
In fact it is also possible that the so called early matchlock guns were indeed the same Portuguese models that reached Japan few years later.
However the most reliable and possible version of the story is that those early firearms were the same used in the Ryukyuu Kingdom that reached Japan in the mid 15th century.

The first documented wound caused by a firearm in Japan is dated 1527, and is listed inside Amano Okisada battle reports.  Although firearms in Japan have been used since the mid 15th century as the records of the Ounin war tell us, this indicates that by the 1530s guns were already disseminated through the country.

The last pre-1543 accounts of firearms came from the Tabuse school of gunnery (砲術); the founder document of the school attested that in 1541 Tabuse Tadamune brought back a gun from South East Asia and actually learned how to use them. Unfortunately the document was written in the 1618 by a direct descendant of the Tabuse family, so it might be inaccurate.
It is however quite possible that those gun, probably based on European models (the Portuguese were making guns in Goa since the 1510) were traded all over the Far East.


Tanegashima: the myth and a more plausible truth 

After the previous paragraph, it is quite obvious that Japan had access to early form of Chinese firearms since the 15th century and it is possible that later on in the early 16th even matchlock arquebus started to be used as well.
However, it is impossible to not see the fact that in Japan firearms started to be used consistently only after the 1550s. This might add some "back-up" for the Tanegashima thesis, but the main problem remain: the whole story is based on the Teppou-ki (鉄砲記), written in the 1611 by Nanpo Bunshi, which main role was to celebrate the Tanegashima family.

So most of its content is filled with legends, and shouldn't be considered the main source for the arrival of guns in Japan, but the power of the tradition over the years have inflated the whole episode.
In addition to that, if Tanegashima was so crucial for the development and spread of the gun technology, the Shimazu would have most likely conquered all Kyuushu and invaded Honshu given the advantage of their assets compared to firearms-free opposing armies.
But this simply didn't happen, and quickly guns were produced all over Japan.

The most probable and plausible reality of the events is that guns (mainly portugues models which were produced in East Asia and adopted even by the Ming) arrived in Japan in between the 1510-1540 by Wokou, the Sino-Japanese pirates.
Most of them conducted illicit trade all over the Far East, and much likely, they were the mean by which teppou were brough to Japan and further developed by the Japanese themselves.

A wokou attack from a the Wakō-zukan (倭寇図巻)

So, assuming that guns existed prior to the fateful 1543 date, why they weren't used as in the later period? The answer is not an easy one, although I want to share a personal theory, but since it is personal please take this information with a pinch of salt.
First of all, we have scattered accounts of firearms usage both in the Ounin war and in the 1520s, but is possible that some accounts of these guns were lost over the ages: the lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean the lack of the phenomenon.
However this won't deny my previous statement, the fact that firearms didn't play a major role until the mid 16th century.

The political situation in the first 20 years of the 1500 was fragmented, chaotic and quite messy.
Most of the country was still under a weakened Ashikaga Shogunate, and the various clans that we often associated with big armies were extremely small at the beginning of this period.
So they clearly lack the resources the warlords of the latest period had.
Although guns didn't required much train to use, they required iron, wood, gunpowder recipes and an industry behind capable of mass produce items.
The same trend was true for armor and swords for example, where the increasing demand lead the armorers to study new, faster and cheaper ways to produce protective gears .

Japan around the 1510; It's easy to see how small the domain were. This had a financial impact on how large and organized armies were.

Japan around the 1560; compared to the 1510's map, the domain and the clans have grown quite extensively, increasing their financial and military power.

Japan around the 1580: it is quite easy to see the egemony of the Oda clan in red, a clan often associated with the intense usage of guns.

It is possible to see that inside the small armies of the early 16th century, firearms (although they might have been seldom used) won't have the same impact as bows or spears, which were easier to obtain given the average level of technology, and more reliable on the field.

When slowly gunsmithing started to enter in Japan, and clan became bigger while increasing their wealth, mass produced items were much more common and firearms started to be regularly deployed together with mass produced spears, bows and armors.
This "paradigm" was true even for Europe for example, where matchlock arquebus, although known since the late 15th century, started to be a prevalent factor in the mid 16th century.

At the end of the day, the story of Tanegashima might be true as well; we have European references talking about this particular episode and it is usually considered the first real contact between the two cultures.
But Tanegashima might have been one of several similar episodes, and it is quite possible that prior to the teppouki the teppou weren't called tanegashima teppou at all outside the Kyuushu region.
It is also fair to say that Nanban trades were established in those years, and that arquebus were traded as well by the Portuguese until the end of the 16th century.
The reason behind this article is that the myth of Tanegashima has to fade down, especially when we talk about the "introduction of gun in Japan", which was anything new by the 1543 and it is much more likely that the first vectors of this introduction were regular and irregular asian merchants rather than the European themselves.

Hope that this article might have been helpful and informative! If you liked it please feel free to share it, use it and if there is any question please feel free to leave a comment down below!

Gunbai