Hōseki (抛石) - Japanese Catapult
Hōseki (抛石 ) - Japanese Catapult A Sijiao taken from Wujing Zongyao ( 武經總要 ). Due to the lack of Japanese iconography on the subject, I've used a Chinese ones which very likely resembled the Japanese version. Another very obscure and overlooked Japanese weapon is the catapult , also known as mangonel . In Japanese it is called Hōseki, Tōsekiki ( 投石機 ), or Hatsuishiki ( 発石木 ) and Hih ō ( 飛砲 ) in historical texts. There are many reasons why this type of weapon is hardly associated with Japanese warfare, but before addressing this fact, it is worth to look at the weapon itself and its history. The first mentions of stone projectiles being used to inflict damage is found inside the Nihon Shoki and we can read that these projectiles were fired by large siege crossbows called Ōyumi (大弓 ) . Nothing is really known about these devices although the academic consensus on the matter is that they weren't catapults-like machines. The first references to proper catapults us