Culture1543

Portuguese Reach Tanegashima and Bring Firearms to Japan

Also called: Arrival of firearms in Japan

A ship carrying Portuguese reached Tanegashima in Japan, bringing the first matchlock guns. Soon mass-produced in Japan, they transformed the wars of the Sengoku period and the Imjin War.

Japanese matchlock guns (tanegashima) — Edo period
pdeaudney · CC BY 2.0 · Source

In 1543 (Tenbun 12) Portuguese merchants aboard a junk of the wokou leader Wang Zhi landed on Tanegashima. The island’s lord, Tanegashima Tokitaka, bought two matchlocks and had his smiths copy them. Called "tanegashima", the guns were mass-produced at Sakai, Kunitomo and elsewhere, and Oda Nobunaga won the Battle of Nagashino in 1575 with massed musketeers. In 1549 Francis Xavier came to Kagoshima to preach Christianity, and the Nanban trade with Portugal began. Matchlocks were the Japanese army’s main weapon in the Imjin War of 1592.

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States at the time: Japan
Portugal
Places: Tanegashima

People

Tanegashima Tokitaka1528 – 1579
related figure · Lord of Tanegashima, who bought two matchlocks from the Portuguese who landed in 1543 and had copies made

Before and after

Earlier: 1519 Magellan–Elcano Circumnavigation
Later: 1550 Northern Raiders and Southern Pirates

Themes that include this event

The Age of Discovery1415 – 1600
From Ceuta to the Manila galleons — two centuries in which European ships crossed the oceans and bound the world together by sea
Ming, Qing and Edo Japan1500 – 1800
The age when the Ming, shaken by northern raiders, southern pirates and the silver economy, fell to Li Zicheng’s rebels, and the Manchu Qing reached its greatest extent and prosperity under Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong — as Japan was unified out of the Warring States into the Edo shogunate’s bakuhan order and closed country, and Joseon, after two great wars, met its neighbours through embassies to Edo and the Northern Learning