MrJones

Good luck to all the NMB members in Japan - let's hope none of you need it. I think a lot of people with breathe easier once everyone's confirmed OK. As another thought, however, what of artefacts? I've heard one or two grim rumours of museums being hit by either the quake or the tsunami and their respective effects. Obviously details will be slow in coming, but one can only hope that the treasures of Japan's history are safe for future generations.

At reading this, my eyebrows rose just a tad. Pistols, y'say? How interesting. I understand that matchlock pistols were made in Europe, but weren't terribly popular owing to the difficulty of keeping the slow-match concealed and lit, unreliability of the weapon in poor weather, short range etc. However, obviously the Japanese found in them sufficient merit to equip themselves accordingly; what was that merit? I assume, by the way, that these pistols are something like this: http://www.kinko-koshirae-swords.com/sa ... tol__7.jpg

Thank you one and all for the helpful information. Makes me rather glad I couldn't afford to spend good money, really. However, I should like it noted that, although I have at least some idea of how a Kai-gunto should be constructed, if I've learned anything thus far in life it's that my knowledge is so limited as to be non-existent. I'd far sooner be cautious and ask questions, before basing decisions on my own meagre knowledge, than go off at half-cock while basking in the glory of my own ill-founded confidence. Perhaps I'm over-cautious, but with good reason, in short: I'm over-cautious because I remain very conscious of my ignorance and callowness in approaching this subject. Now I agree, that certainly looks very little like the standard description and image of a Kai-gunto. However, since I am ignorant - shamefully so - I refused to discount the possibility that it might be some strange variant thereof, or a rather beaten-about example, that I hadn't seen before. Happily, my ignorance is being whittled away, bit by bit. Copy of Military Swords of Japan now en route, for a start!

Very interesting, there, Matt; I'm surprised if that is the case, since T. Del Mar's stuff is usually pretty good. That said, one must never discount the possibility that an earlier collector was led astray. I fully intend to pick up a copy of Military Swords of Japan (along with Kaigun, Sunburst, Heavy Cruiser Takao and a bunch of other IJN-related stuff) as soon as possible. Might arrange that as my next inter-library loan, actually.

Howdy lads and lasses. I know this will seem horribly vague, but... well, having a job and all, I've started getting things that interest me at long last. Among these is a jezail, which has consumed a fair wodge of my time and money for the last six months; another long-term goal is a Japanese sword. Now, a week or so ago the catalogue for Thomas Del Mar's latest auction, down in London, came into my hands at work. While idly flicking through it at lunch, I suddenly stopped. Lot #7: "A Japanese NAVAL SWORD (KATANA), 20TH CENTURY with curved single-edged fullered blade, signed tang pierced with a single hole, iron tsuba, and iron mounts decorated with soft metal, in its saya 72.5cm; 28 1/2in blade Estimate: 200-300" http://www.thomasdelmar.com/Catalogues/ ... 0007-0.jpg Sadly, after a lot of thinking I've realised that I just can't afford to part with that kind of money on the run up to Christmas. Indeed, I'm still recovering from all the gun-related things I've had to get to work on my musket. It has, however, got me thinking; for the past 12 months I've thought about a Japanese sword, but now the very real prospect of getting a Kai-gunto seems, at last, to be in sight, and to have a piece of the Imperial Navy's history in my own hands would certainly be a joy. So, before I go launching money around at things, I'd like to know a little more about 'em. I've lurked here a while, as you know, and I've read that, among other things, most of them are stainless steel and machine-made (fair enough, they need to resist salt-water corrosion), and that they're rather rarer than the Army swords. Nonetheless, beyond that I know nothing much. What sort of market price do they command? Is this one more likely to be a gendaito or similar, being signed? Just how rare are they anyway? I know a stainless steel one probably isn't much of a cutter, but their historical value is surely quite high. So yes. Sorry for being so vague, but I reckon I can only ask and hope for some help from you very helpful chaps. Thanks very much! Meredydd Jones (By the way - figure I might as well get over this adolescent terror of using one's name on the web. I'm not exactly likely to be lured to a terrible fate from the NMB... and anyone that tried would get one hell of a shock )

It's just as bloody maddening here, too; I did hear rumours that the BBC was working on a Vuvuzela-free transmission for the UK, but so far nothing more seems to have come of it. I especially loathe the way they keep bellowing with the idiotic things during the national anthems; you could hardly hear Kimi ga yo last night. Still, it didn't seem to bother the Blue Samurai too much! :D

Ron, Most interesting to hear that "from the horse's mouth", so to speak. I have in my hand a copy of Bert Hall's fascinating book, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology and Tactics, which contains a chapter exclusively dedicated to the vagaries of smoothbore ballistics. A wondrous subject in itself, that... but anyway. Hall refers extensively to a series of tests conducted at the Graz Steiermaerkisches Landeszeughaus in 1988-89, which we performed upon a number of muskets (rifled and smoothbore) and pistols (all smoothbore, though I suspect that goes without saying). He notes: (pp. 140-141) These tests were performed with the most assiduous attention to ensuring that only the inherent, mechanical inaccuracy of the weapon was what was being detected. Hall again: (p. 140)

I find all this most interesting. I'm no expert (as if that weren't clear), but I'd expect, as I said in the other Tanegashima thread (well, the other current Tanegashima thread), that converting a smoothbore barrel, built around the sorts of pressures generated by black powder and firing a reasonably large bullet, to take a modern cartridge (i.e. a post-1884-ish, smokeless powder cartridge) would be not only difficult, but not particularly useful and possibly dangerous to boot. Even by 1883, European powers were moving, while retaining black powder as the propellant, to smaller bullets for their standard-issue cartridges, and one would have thought that attempting to discharge, say, an 8mm bullet down a 12.7mm (.50) barrel would have been a dodgy proposition when it comes to accuracy; even with, say, a .45 or an 11mm bullet, the windage would be on the same order as that exhibited by ordinary muzzle-loaders. Is it perhaps possible that these weapons, if they were conversions, were all made in a small time period - say from ~1867 to ~1885? Or perhaps the Japanese who converted these weapons were able to purchase surplus, or obsolete ammunition for their weapons? It seems much more likely that Ron and Ian have it - these "conversions" were modern action and barrel fittings added to a traditional stock. Perhaps many Japanese gunners found it decidedly jarring to move from their old Tanegashima to these strange Western things with big, flat, heavy stocks and butts, though I wonder what the recoil from a modern "nitro propellant" cartridge would feel like when transferred through a Tanegashima-style stock. Also, and just to throw everyone - does anybody know why the Japanese went in for those vast, flared muzzles? It seems to me to be both a waste of metal - and thereby money - and an encumbrance, adding weight where one doesn't need it and unbalancing the piece. I await the enlightened responses with anticipation...

Cheers Ron, a very helpful description indeed. One question: the recommended treatment for use if the gun is not to be used "for a while" should last for quite some time, I take it? Obviously, being a small museum and not having anywhere to do it (though I'd love to - sigh) we don't get chance to shoot our pieces, even if they're in good condition and working order, metallurgically and mechanically. Still working on our latest acquisition, I'm now at the stage of de-rusting (as far as possible) and then oiling the barrel for protective purposes. You should've seen the face of the local gunshop's attendant when I asked for a .60 brush and a four-foot cleaning rod ... I'd quite like to possess a caplock Tanegashima, now I think about it... Added: Also, Piers and others: Converting a Tanegashima to bolt-action!? Sounds like quite a tall order. I may be wrong here, but wouldn't the barrel be a problematic area? Bolt-action being largely associated with smokeless powder, I'd have thought using a black powder barrel - a smoothbore at that - with a modern smokeless cartridge, firing a small bullet, would produce results that were at best inaccurate, and at worst very unpleasant for one's face.

Piers, very nice indeed. "Bisen" seems to be analogous to a threaded breech plug in Western guns. On that subject, it's interesting to hear that the Japanese disdain civil, "hunting" guns in favour of the military pieces. From what I've read, in the West, the gun produced for a hunter - i.e. mostly for the reasonably wealthy squires and gentry - was generally superior to the "mass-produced" military firearms of the period, made to tighter tolerances and with possibly greater quality control. A source (which I don't have handy at work) noted that, in essence, a well-made 16th-century arquebus such as might be ordered by the wealthy nobility for hunting (or indeed for armed service) would shoot as well as, or better than, a military musket of the 18th or early 19th centuries, such as a common-or-garden Brown Bess, lock notwithstanding - and even then, a wheel-lock could, I'd expect, achieve reliability comparable to a flintlock; being so costly, a wheel-lock arquebus/musket would probably be a piece made for those of some considerable means. Anyway, the practical side of this is that I'm surprised that the reverse was true in Japan. I'm not exactly hot on Japanese history, especially between the Sengoku-jidai and the Meiji restoration, but I thought the Tokugawa's antipathy toward firearms (at least in large-scale public use) would have meant that the only guns not made for military service would be high-quality hunting weapons for use by the wealthy and powerful, rather than the Japanese equivalent of a cheap-and-cheerful farmer's 12-bore.

Interesting, Piers. I'm just imagining how I would use such a device, and guess that you'd hold the end of the line around the left hand finger as described, and then one could simply tug it to open the pan lid prior to firing, thus saving a few seconds of adjusting grip (and all its inherent effects on accuracy and timing of fire) and so on to do it with the right instead. Am I far off?

More than satisfactorily, Ron; thank you both, gents, for yet another insight. Now I'm going to bother everyone with a yet more simple query: what exactly does "monme" denote?

Ron, what a beautiful piece! I'm certainly glad that the NMB covers guns as well as swords. If I may, I'd like to pose some more (doubtless rather simple) questions for the experts hereabouts (i.e. everyone but yours truly). I expect they'll all have been answered many a time before... First, that lock. It's really quite beautiful, but if I'm not mistaken the mainspring appears to be a coil spring. I didn't know this was at all common on any lock of this period, and am interested to know more about it. Why did the Japanese adopt such a mechanism, and when? It seems to me (as an utter novice) that such a spring would be decidedly more difficult to manufacture, and possibly more fragile, than the much simpler V-springs prevalent in Western guns. Did the weapons first introduced to Japan, perhaps, have a similar spring? I'm especially curiosu since a quick gander into the operation of the snapping matchlock turned up this happy picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan ... eum_SF.JPG Secondly, and still on that subject, does anyone have any insights on how they eliminated what I understand to have been the principal difficulty with the snapping matchlock - that of extinguishing the match if an overly strong spring were used? The obvious possibility that occurs is, simply, that of very careful manufacture; perhaps this and that coiled mainspring are connected. Third, I notice the gun is fitted with what seems to be a backsight, highly unusual on most Western muzzle-loaders unless they happened to be rifled. I'm assuming this piece isn't rifled, but I'd be most interested in finding out why, if it isn't, the Japanese bothered with a backsight in a weapon known, even with careful loading and shooting, to be highly inaccurate at the sort of ranges where one might use a backsight.

Well, I too suppose I can number myself among the young - and definitely among the near-totally ignorant. 22 years old (23 in July), I've been fascinated by military history since I was a very small boy; my degree is in military history, and toward the end of my time studying (I'd still like to do a Master's degree, but money is most definitely an object), I started to gravitate towards the Imperial Japanese Navy. Unfortunately, that interest has led to a succession of branching interests. To understand the Imperial Navy, one must understand its men, its machines, its doctrines and so forth; to understand those, one must look to the people and state that created them; and to understand the Japanese people and nation requires that one study the history, culture and (oh gawd) the language. Nihonto are, unsurprisingly, a significant aspect of that. The technology they incorporate, the purposes and thinking behind their design, the history of their use and the men who make and wield them are all bound together with the huge whole. In a heartwarming aside (d'aww), it's all my father's fault; he was the one who bought me the late M. J. Whitley's Battleships of World War II: an International Encyclopaedia. Having browsed the British ships - the floating castles of a glorious past ,gone long before I first saw our green and pleasant land - I started ambling through the rest of the book, and came across two photographs of HIJMS Fuso, running her trials in Bungo Suido after her first, 1933 modernisation. I don't think even heroin bends the mind quite so quickly as those two images bent mine towards the IJN... As for acquiring Nihonto (or indeed, Shin gunto) of my own... I somehow doubt my income could support it, for the moment - and besides, the last time I tried my hand at any of the Japanese martial arts (ninjitsu), at the age of 18, my self-consciousness overcame my wary curiosity, so it seems unlikely I'd be able to acquire one for practice :lol:

Argh! I bury myself in database and things for two days and the thread's gone off on a tangent! Oh well. Piers, I'm amazed to see that many re-enactors in one place, let alone that many with working guns! I can just imagine what the police would say around these parts. But still, I'm even more pleased to see that you shoot yourself, so I can get it from the horse's mouth: how are these Japanese guns? How do you find you perceive the recoil, in relation to a Western muzzle-loader of roughly similar proportions? Perhaps excluding caplocks from that query. I said I couldn't imagine it being comfortable, having the arms taking all that energy, but I didn't realise I had a primary source of whom to enquire. And, speaking of multi-barrelled guns, I spotted on another forum; that little specimen struck me as looking and sounding very like the Chinese reproductions being discussed here. For some reason, they seem inclined to accept it as being a percussion-ignition gun, yet assess it as being 15th Century (if I recall); I wasn't aware that such an ignition mechanism was known, let alone used, as far back as that. And Ian - I didn't know Durs Egg were contracted to produce Nock guns; I'd always read that they were all produced at Nock's themselves, hence the name.