The
first images picturing the distinct Japanese asymmetrical longbow
date from the Yayoi period (ca. 500 BC–300 AD). The first written
document describing Japanese archery is the Chinese chronicle Weishu
(dated around 297 AD), which tells how in the Japanese isles people
use "a wooden bow that is short from the bottom and long from
the top." The bow was used a a weapon of war as well as for
hunting.
When
the Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1543, they brought with them
muskets or harquebuse. Within 20 years the Japanese blacksmith were
able to manufacture their own muskets usually called tanegashima.
The
bow kept being used alongside the tanegashima for quite a while
because of its longer reach and accuracy and mostly because its
highly superior rate of fire. A good archer could fire 30 to 40
arrows during the time it took a musketeer to reload his musket.
However,
it was much easier and faster to train a musketeer than it was to
train an archer. This allowed Oda Nobunaga (and his ally Tokugawa
Ieyasu) to annihilate the traditional samurai archer cavalry army of
the Takeda clan with an army mostly consisting of peasants armed with
tanegashima in 1575 at the Battle
of Nagashino.
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