Home › Timeline › The Releases, and the Enclosure That Follows Each › Tanegashima: the gun reaches Japan
In 1543 Portuguese sailors landed on Tanegashima, south of Kyushu, in the first recorded trade between Europe and Japan; the island's lord bought their arquebuses and had working copies made, and Japanese gun-making spread quickly. At Nagashino in 1575 Oda Nobunaga's matchlock men, firing from behind a palisade, broke the charge of the Takeda cavalry; their number is disputed, the traditional 3,000 against about 1,000 in the Shinchō kōki, the chief contemporary account.
The mechanism
A TECHNOLOGY THAT TURNS THE BOARD
How it was checked
- EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE RELEASES, AND THE ENCLOSURE THAT FOLLOWS EACH 1382 to 1694
- SourcesRECORD — EBSCO Research Starters, 'Europeans Begin Trade with Japan'; Britannica, 'Battle of Nagashino' · checked 19 September: Britannica (read in a browser; WebFetch is refused by the site), 'Battle of Nagashino' (by Stephen Turnbull); Wikipedia, 'Battle of Nagashino' (Shincho koki; Fujimoto 1980); EBSCO Research Starters, 'Europeans Begin Trade with Japan' (the row's source)
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