Firearms in Ryukyu
The Kingdom of Ryûkyû is known to have possessed firearms as early as the 1450s, if not earlier. They used a variety of gunpowder hand-weapons and cannon obtained from the Chinese, but did not make use of European-style arquebuses or cannon.
Ryûkyû enjoyed extensive trade with China, including trade in weapons, up until the 1450s, when a ban was placed on Fujian merchants selling weapons overseas, as these were needed to defend the coasts against wakô raids. Yet, Koreans visiting Ryûkyû around that time noted that Ryûkyû possessed firearms akin to their own.[1] A Ryukyuan envoy in 1466 demonstrated one of these firearms before the Ashikaga shogun and his court; Stephen Turnbull describes this as the first gunpowder explosion to occur in Japan since the Mongol invasions,[2] when the Mongols made use of a sort of grenade or bomb.
The European arquebus, introduced to Japan in 1543, never caught on in Ryûkyû, and the gunpowder weapons used were adapted from Chinese technology. Known as hyaa (火矢), or "fire arrows,"[3] they had short barrels, and essentially consisted of short, slightly conical iron tubes attached to wooden shafts. Some had three barrels. The weapon was held under the left arm while the right hand was used to light it. The Japanese made use of such weapons as well, as late as in the 1548 battle of Uedahara, but the superior European-style arquebus became more widely used after that.[1]
These Chinese-style weapons, or heavier versions of the same, were used extensively in castle defenses, not only at Shuri, but also at, for example, Nakijin gusuku, where gunports were explicitly installed above the castle's gates, and presumably at other gusuku (castles/fortresses)v as well.[4]
Turnbull surmises that techniques of firing in volleys were unfamiliar in Ryûkyû, contributing to their unpreparedness in the face of the samurai invaders from Satsuma han in 1609, who made extensive use of arquebuses and of volley-firing tactics.[1]
Ryûkyû also made use of a form of cannon called ishibiya, a term which later came to refer specifically to those which fired shots of one kanme in weight (3.75kg) or heavier. Ammunition of this type has been found in excavations at Shuri castle. Cannon were also mounted at Mie and Yarazamori gusuku which defended the port of Naha.[1]
