Qui si parla di Artiglieria.... sempre tratto da Samurai Warfare di Stephen Turnbull
Cannon were known in Japan as early as
1551, when two specimens were presented to
Otomo Yoshizumi by the Portuguese, as
presents from 'The King of Rome'. Each consisted
of a heavy barrel on a swivel, and both
were breech-loaders, the powder and shot
being loaded into the top of the breech by a
separate cylinder with a handle welded on,
which is by no means as efficient as a muzzle-
loader. As with the arquebuses, attempts
were made to copy the cannon, but not with
the same success, and for decades European
cannon were to be prized above those of
Japanese manufacture. In 1568 a letter from
Otomo refers to another cannon being
acquired from the Portuguese, but that this
one had been lost a sea on the voyage from
Malacca. Nevertheless we read that in 1558
cannon were fired from the coast of Bungo
(the Otomo territory) to drive off an attack by
'several hundred boats', which implies that
many guns had been made locally. In 1571
Oda Nobunaga showed that his vision with
regard to arquebuses extended to the use of
cannon, when he placed an order with the
Kunitomo gunsmiths for a gun that would
take a load equivalent to 750 grams. Cannon
were fired from ships against the Nagashima
garrison, and at the two battles of Kizugawaguchi
in 1576 and 1578. Cannon were
used at the land battle of Noguchi in 1578,
and by 1582 were being used in the provinces
of Etchū and Noto. Here Maeda Toshiie
wrote to his brother asking for twenty cannon-
balls. He also received another cannon,
but sent it back to be recast because the barrel
was too small. In 1584 cannon, probably
in the form of swivel guns, were fired from
boats mounted offshore during the Battle of
Okita Nawate on the Shimabara peninsula.
The account of the capture of Kanki castle
by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in his campaign
against the Mori in 1582 shows that the use
of cannon in siege warfare was now well
appreciated:
Korezumi Gorōzaemon and his soldiers
from the province of Wakasa were
assigned to the eastern gate of Kanki castle.
First he had two high towers erected
from which cannon were fired. The moat
was filled in and artificial mounds were
made, and from these the castle was
attacked. Takigawa Sakon moved from
the southern to the eastern gate where he
had labourers erect towers and had the
walls and keep bombarded with cannon.
The keep caught fire and burned down.
During the Korean War requests were sent
back to Japan for cannon to help reduce the
Korean castles. Because most cannon were
used from ships or for siege warfare in Japan
there was almost no development of what
might be called 'field pieces', i.e., cannon that
were essentially mobile ordinance. There are
not many illustrations of how cannon were
mounted for field service, and in most cases
they seem to have consisted simply of a barrel
tied on a cart pulled by oxen. For siege
purposes many weird and wonderful combinations
of gun carriage were developed. An
illustration from 1614 shows a small Japanese
bronze cannon, inside a larger wooden stock,
which is tied on to a pile of rice bales stuffed
with sand. Hokusai drew a picture showing
a European cannon mounted on a very solid
looking carriage, not unlike a ship's cannon,
but without wheels. Otherwise gun carriages
were not unlike the heavy wooden stands
developed to hold contemporary European
bombards during sieges. Elevation was
achieved by ropes, rather than the European
method of using wedges hammered under
the breech.
It is interesting to note that the Portuguese
made extensive use of Japanese copper in
casting the cannon made at their gun
foundries in Goa and Macao, which were
regarded as the cheapest and best to be
obtained throughout Asia. In fact some Portuguese
cannon cast from Japanese copper
were used by the Duke of Wellington at the
siege of Badajos in 1812. When Japan broke
off relations with Catholic Europe in 1639 the
market for copper was lost, and the re-estab-
lishment of it was one of the main reasons for
the embassy sent to Japan from Macao in
1647.
The Portuguese were soon supplanted as
the main suppliers of imported cannon to
Japan. In 1609 the Dutch established a trading
post (called a 'Factory') in Hirado, followed
in 1613 by the English, and it was
these two nations that supplied many of the
cannon used by the Tokugawa during the
siege of Osaka castle. By 1614 Tokugawa
Ieyasu was buying as many cannon as he
could lay hands on, Dutch and English guns
being much preferred to Portuguese or Chinese
models. The Tokugawa continued to be
well supplied by foreign traders when the
siege was over, and in addition to importing
pieces, the Dutch also began casting cannon
in Hirado. In 1615 a gun weighing 600
pounds (240 kilograms) was cast in Hirado,
and later in the same year Richard Cocks, of
the English Factory, watched two more being
made, and wrote:
I marvelled at their workmanship. For
they carried the metal in ladles above
twenty yards from the place where the
mould stood, and so put it in, ladleful
after ladle, and yet made as formal ordinance
as we do in Christendom, both of
brass and iron. Captain Specx told me
that neither workmanship nor stuff did
not stand him in half the price it cost
them in Christendom.
After the siege of Osaka castle the only disruption
that seriously challenged the Tokugawa
rule was the largely Christian
Shimabara Rebellion, when 38,000 disaffected
peasants and ronin (masterless
samurai) shut themselves up in the dilapidated
Hara castle on the Shimabara peninsula,
and withstood a long siege. The
failure by the Tokugawa army to overcome
Hara castle by bombardment is somewhat
puzzling in view of the clear superiority the
Tokugawa guns had enjoyed at Osaka.
However, twenty years of peace had
passed, so skills may have been forgotten,
but Hara was also in a very different geographical
position. It was built on a peninsula
jutting out into the sea, and the
topography ruled out long-range artillery
fire, because there was no prominent keep
to range on. The Dutch assisted by bombarding
the castle from the sea, but this
served largely to put heart into the defenders,
who reckoned that the Tokugawa commanders
were getting desperate.
The castle eventually fell because of starvation,
and was taken by storm. The failure to
take it earlier turned the Tokugawa Shōgun's
attention towards the provision of mortars,
which would have been very useful because
of their high trajectory. The Dutch traders
were asked to demonstrate some mortars in
action, and cast some for a session in March
1639. In the words of an eye-witness:
The first shot fell too short, yet was
observed to fall into a deep marshy hollow
wherein rice was planted, between
17 and 18 feet deep, and consequently
in their opinion it was either lost, or
could not possibly take effect; albeit it
proved to be the contrary, for shortly
afterwards it burst with such violence
that all the mud, slime and filth was
hurled so high into the air, that all who
saw it were astonished, and particularly
the Regents who could not show
enough amazement. At the second shot
the bomb exploded in the mortar,
whereby the gunner's face was severely
burned and all the rest of us were
wounded more or less.
Nothing daunted, the Dutch tried again.
Eleven shots were fired. Some exploded in
the barrel, others in mid air, and others in
nearby fields. None hit the target. The Japanese
were none the less impressed, and
requested that the twelfth shot be ignited in
the house which had been the original target.
The resulting conflagration proved satisfactory,
and the demonstration was concluded.
The politics of isolation, rather than samurai
warfare, now dominated in Japan, and
cannon were not to be fired in anger again for
more than two centuries. But the Japanese
retained a respect for artillery, and when the
English ship The Return made an unsuccessful
attempt to re-open trade with Japan, two
brass guns and one mortar were included in
the cargo as presents for the Shōgun. In 1811,
when Russians visited Hakodate in the north
of Japan, they found Dutch cannon mounted
on the forts. These had been obtained
through the tiny Dutch trading post on
Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki Bay,
which was Japan's only contact with the
West during the Tokugawa Period.
"Teste alte, perdio! ...Quelle sono pallottole, non merda." (Lepic, colonello dei granatieri a cavallo della Guardia - Eylau 1807)
"Un ussaro che a trent'anni non è ancora morto è un vigliacco!" (Lasalle, generale della cavalleria leggera dell'esercito francese)