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** The year after the [[battle of Nagashino]]. Oda Nobunaga's troops withdrew after testing the defensive firepower of the Ikko-ikki in Ishiyama Honganji.
** The year after the [[battle of Nagashino]]. Oda Nobunaga's troops withdrew after testing the defensive firepower of the Ikko-ikki in Ishiyama Honganji.
** Nobunaga's navy was defeated by the Mori navy at the [[First Battle of Kizugawaguchi]]. Both sides used large numbers of arquebuses aboard ships.
** Nobunaga's navy was defeated by the Mori navy at the [[First Battle of Kizugawaguchi]]. Both sides used large numbers of arquebuses aboard ships.
==Edo Period==
Firearms continued to be used by both samurai authorities and by peasants & commoners in the [[Edo period]]. Sakai and Kunitomo continued to be the chief sites of production, and matchlocks continued to be the dominant form of firearms used; firearms technology did not advance much within Japan over the course of the 17th to mid-19th centuries. Flintlocks, which had replaced the matchlock in Europe, were known and occasionally produced, but the matchlock remained dominant in Japan, possibly in part because they produced less recoil. These sorts of muskets were by far the most common form of firearm in the country, with some estimates claiming that roughly 150,000 to 200,000 firearms were in circulation at any given time in Tokugawa Japan. Peasants' weapons generally fired shot two to three ''[[Japanese measurements|monme]]'' in weight, equivalent to .440 to .495 caliber, in today's terminology. At the request of the [[Tokugawa shogunate|shogunate]], gunsmiths also on occasion produced handguns and small cannon.
[[David Howell]] argues that over the course of the period, within the countryside at least, firearms came to be seen less as weapons (i.e. for military purposes) and more as essential agricultural equipment. Peasants maintained possession of their guns after [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]]'s [[Sword Hunts]] in the 1580s-90s, which specifically targeted swords, and not firearms. It was only in [[1657]] that regulations on peasant ownership of weapons began to be put into place; even then, hunters, and farmers who claimed they needed guns to help defend themselves and their crops against wild boar and other such threats, were permitted to continue to own firearms. Physically identical weapons came to be divided into categories according to their use, with ''ryôshi teppô'' being used for hunting, and ''odoshi teppô'' being used for scaring away animals, i.e. for protection of people, homes, and crops. Once labeled as being dedicated to one of these two uses, a given weapon would continue to possess that identity, even as it was passed down through the generations, and would not generally be seen as something to be used for the other purpose.
Three months after the death of [[Shogun]] [[Tokugawa Tsunayoshi]] in [[1709]], whose reputation today continues to associate him with compassion policies for the protection of animals, gun policies changed somewhat, and farmers were permitted for the first time to employ live ammunition rather than blanks in scaring away animals. A series of edicts issued in the 1720s not only permitted the use of weapons by peasants year-round, but actually encouraged their use, and the borrowing of weapons, for the purposes of scaring away animals.
However, the use of firearms for this purpose, and their use in hunting, were still maintained as starkly different categories in the eyes of the authorities. Hunters hunted as their chief source of livelihood, and so for them guns were seen as necessities, and as symbols of their identity, and they were thus permitted to own guns outright. For farmers, however, guns were seen as something needed only temporarily, in those instances when threatened by animals, though in point of fact this "temporary" need might recur season after season, down through the generations. Farmers' guns, therefore, were generally not owned by the peasants, but were instead on loan from the authorities, at least nominally; in some cases, peasants physically borrowed the weapons from samurai, but in many cases, they kept the weapons, passing them on down the generations, though they were still nominally not seen as the property of the peasant household. Some guns were designated "two-season guns," to be used only at the height of the growing season, and to be, in theory at least, returned to the authorities during the rest of the year; other weapons were considered "four-season guns," though even these, in theory, were to be returned for a few days out of each year, and then re-borrowed if circumstances in the new year demanded it. Most likely, more often than not, guns were not physically returned and re-borrowed in this way, but were simply kept, as if on extended loan.
As a result of not officially owning the guns, peasants had to request formal permission to repair or replace broken weapons, as well as when transferring weapons, and their associated licenses (written on small wooden boards), to their heirs or to others. Shogunal authorities exercised relatively direct control in these matters initially, in the 17th century, but after the 1720s, in at least some regions of the archipelago, villages began to take greater control over such matters, authorizing their residents to make such repairs, replacements, and transfers of ownership.
In the early 19th century, the shogunate began to worry about the amorphous imagined threat "bad guys" - including [[ronin|rônin]], jobless commoners, and the like - hoarding weapons and planning violence or other criminal activities. Numerous edicts banned peasants from engaging in martial activities, including firing practice. Surveys uncovered a considerable number of "hidden" unregistered guns in peasant villages, most of them being kept in plain sight and (we might presume) used in a normal fashion, but simply not properly registered, as a result of the complexities of shogunal requirements on these matters. The shogunate thus gained a more solid, or accurate, impression of how many guns were in circulation, and confiscated many of them, reducing the number available to undesirable elements (as well as to upright citizens).
==Notes to the Text==
==Notes to the Text==
*Sekigahara 1600 Anthony J. Bryant 1995, New York
*Sekigahara 1600 Anthony J. Bryant 1995, New York
*Arms and Armor of the Samurai: History of Weaponry in Ancient Japan Ian Bottomley and A.P. Hopson 1996, New York
*Arms and Armor of the Samurai: History of Weaponry in Ancient Japan Ian Bottomley and A.P. Hopson 1996, New York
*[[David Howell]]. "The Social Life of Firearms in Tokugawa Japan." ''Japanese Studies'' 29:1 (2009), 65-80.
*Samurai and Illustrated History Mitsuo Kuri 2002, Tokyo
*Samurai and Illustrated History Mitsuo Kuri 2002, Tokyo
*The Battle of Nagashino Nathan Ledbetter http://www.samurai-archives.com/ban.html
*The Battle of Nagashino Nathan Ledbetter http://www.samurai-archives.com/ban.html
