What Were Smuggled to Japan (12)

     Let me talk about iron next.

     In 1543, Tanegashima Tokitaka (1528-1579) bought 2 matchlock guns from Portuguese traders.  He had Yaita Kinbe (1502-1570), a sword smith, copy the guns.  At first, Kinbe only could make defective ones, which were called “tanegashima hari.”  He, or Japanese people at large, did not know how to cut screws, and welded the tail end of guns instead of using screws, which left the guns difficult to clean up and, thus, easy to misfire or to blow up.

     Next year, those Portuguese traders brought a gun smith.  Kinbe learned very quickly from him how to cut screws, and made tens of matchlock guns within a year.

     By the end of the 16th century, each warlord had come to have thousands of matchlock guns.  Japan had come to possess as many as 0.3-0.5 million guns in total.  Japan was fairly good at import substituting industrialization even at the time.

     The problem was iron.  Being handmade, each matchlock gun weighed different, from about 1 kilogram to 5 kilograms.  Let me make a guess from leftover average ones that they used about 3 kilograms of iron in average.  0.5 million guns means 1500 tons of iron.  Even after World War II, Japan had to industrialize itself by the processing trade due to its scarce natural resources.  Iron sand and simple furnaces could not provide that much iron within half a century.