Regarding the image of the samurai, Japan and the United States have different understandings, and in American film and television dramas such as "The Last Samurai" and "Hero", the samurai hate to use muskets as if they are dirty hands. However, the traditional Japanese sword and sword films are diametrically opposed, and the thieves who use muskets in films such as "Heart Stick" and "Great Bodhisattva Ridge" really use it as a tool to defeat the strong with the weak. This is the understanding of Japanese history by Japanese film and television directors such as Akira Kurosawa, because the use of muskets has never been taboo in the eyes of Japanese samurai.
According to Japanese war statistics, in many battles from 1563 (the year Uesugi sister became famous) to 1638 (the year the Shimabara Rebellion ended and Miyamoto Musashi's last battle), 20.6% of the casualties came from gun damage, 9% of the casualties were caused by catapult weapons (the victims included the famous Miyamoto Musashi), compared with 38.6% of the damage caused by muskets, which was 22.2%. Only 4.5% of the hapless ghosts with pure wounds under the katana were injured. Muskets were a winning formula on the Japanese battlefield, and they also increased the proportion of musketeers by three and a half times on the Korean battlefield, and there were really samurai in Japan who specialized in muskets and formed a genre.
The Japanese not only used muskets on the battlefield, but also used muskets in small-scale battles, using them as the first weapon of assassination. For example, the most famous change in The Sakurada Gate in modern Japanese history was an assassination with muskets. The bitter lord of the Sakurada Gate Change, Inui Naohiro, was a master of TheAido Andi, the best at entering the white blade with his bare hands; his bodyguards included nagata Taro, a master of the second sword stream, and sixty samurai who traveled with him. The righteous soldiers who assassinated him were 17 Mito Ronin and 1 Samalon, of whom there were no great masters, and they were disadvantaged in number and quality. At the time of the events of March 24, 1860, Mori Gorokuro first approached the palanquin of the bitter lord, Inohi, pretending to be wronged, and then suddenly slashed and killed Inoue's guards. Before I could react, he was shot by Kurosawa's continuous pistol, and he was shot in the waist and thigh one after another, and he quickly lost his combat effectiveness. The second knife flow master Nagata Taro guards did not lose the face of the grandmaster Miyamoto Musashi, threw away the coat, drew the sword and cut people in one go, and instantly killed the indata shigeru in the assassination group, and the hanlang people did not dare to come forward for a while, and when they saw that they were about to overturn, he was also shot by a pistol.
The good han of the Sama Domain, Lang Shi, Muraji Zuoweimon took the opportunity to approach Ii Naohiro's palanquin again, cut down the miscellaneous soldiers, and dragged the badly injured Ii Naohiro out and beheaded him. In the whole battle, there were three people who were killed by the assassination party and committed suicide after being seriously injured, four people were killed on the spot on the scene of the bitter lord's side, and four people died after being seriously injured, and the most critical attacks in the battle were completed by the Colt 1851 revolver of the Japanese cottage, which could shoot continuously and through the armor, becoming the most powerful weapon for the assassin.
This incident changed the political situation in Japan, and the killing power of pistols became the consensus of Japanese samurai. Therefore, in the Japanese samurai movie, muskets and pistols are ace weapons, and there is no distinction between good and evil, and Sanshiro Kuwata, played by Tatsuya Nakayo, uses the pistol as a large killing weapon (it becomes a rifle in "Twilight Dart"), and also in "Great Bodhisattva Ridge", Chinese's younger brother Soldier and Horse is also encouraged to use a pistol for revenge. Both Japanese samurai and swordsmanship masters were masters of swordsmanship, and Miyamoto Musashi believed that the bow and arrow were the kings of long-range killing, that samurai should be proficient in various weapons, and that he would not reject muskets as the little fat man in the United States imagined.
The 17th-century German swordsmanship master also said: "When you fight with a swift sword, don't use the dagger in the secondary weapon anymore, use the short-barrel musket as your secondary weapon... In an emergency, one should use all the weapons one can think of, because things will always go to extremes, and this is a dangerous time. "The rivers and lakes are sinister, what is convenient to use, the practical faction of cutting people every day is not as pretentious as the Western film and television drama screenwriters."
This article is the original manuscript of the Cold Weapons Research Institute and the signed author of the cold weapons research institute. The editor-in-chief and author Li Congjia shall not be reproduced by any media or public account without written authorization, and the offender will be investigated for legal responsibility.
Some of the image sources are online, if you have copyright questions, please contact us