Bugyotsuji

Good to see you here, George. I am new here myself and it's a bit daunting but you will already have discovered that as you have spent a bit of time here perusing the site. Looking forward to seeing your pics when they are ready.

Thanks for the supporting info, Justin. You may be right about a family or hunting gun, or even one for target practice. Many of the Awa guns, 阿波筒 Awazutsu are castle or ships' 狭間筒 Hazamazutsu loophole/eyehole guns, long in barrel, but only about 10-12 mm in bore, and designed for the Daimyo's target pratice days and sniping. Awazutsu usually have the attachment rear sight (often with the folding/sliding extension missing) which supports the idea that your gun was designed for accuracy. I have a Kunitomo 馬上筒 bajouzutsu matchlock pistol, by the way, which I suspect is relatively old, possibly even Pre-Edo, from the first 50 years of gun manufacture in Japan. It too has a hallmark in the lock brassware. I fire it regularly at displays.

Ian, what you say is fascinating and I have to admit that I hadn't considered the possibility. Mine is about 38 cm in overall length, (1'3", 15 inches). The barrels are 14 cm or 4.5 inches long, and about 1.5 or 1.6 cm in calibre. Each has its own touch-hole at the base of the tube. I'm afraid it's very rusty and crumbling in my hands as I measure it now. Such a short barrel could not have been very accurate, and signalling makes as much sense as anything else. In fact the very earliest Chinese single tubes were called something that means wolfsmoke, Noroshi 狼煙 (beacons to scare off wild animals?) so they were as much firework receptacles as tubes for propelling an object. This gun was sold to me by a Chinese stall-holder in Japan some years ago. I phoned one of the top experts on guns in Japan and told him about it. He wrote me a warning letter saying that I shouldn't publish anything. He said it was either a fake (enclosing some photos of modern ones that are made to look old, and then flogged to tourists in Beijing. Pretty obviously fake they were.) or it was genuine. If the latter, then it may well be a Chinese cultural relic and as such the trader could be shot for smuggling it out of China. (If indeed that is what he had done.) The Mongols used to clear the battlefield of anything metal, to preserve weapons secrets? for reuse? or for melting and recasting I heard, so this kind of practice may explain why there are very few extant. One of the barrels was blocked with a rock-hard blackish substance and after some experimentation I managed to scrape quite a bit of weak fizzly gunpowder out of it which I kept in a film case. I also have some Chinese manuscript illustrations showing a chappie on horseback carrying one of these as though to shoot it forwards, with a taper? in one hand for the touch-holes; the explanantion says that once the three barrels are discharged it can be used as a club, or reversed and used as a spear. I don't know how reliable the picture is, or the explanation, and although the gun looks similar it's not exactly the same. Can you show your picture, Ian? I'll see if I can post what I have.

Not at all, Carlo! Thank you for asking, though. I appreciate it.

Justin, I've had another little look at your gun and various things suggest themselves. If anyone wishes to contradict, then please feel free. It looks fairly late, say 1820-1850? It looks like a 侍筒　Shizutsu samurai gun, or a 軍用筒 Gunyozutsu military gun, with decorations added at some point. Do you know how many Monme the bore or calibre/calibre is/are? You say it is a slim barrel? Hope for a minimum of 4 Monme, but 6 if poss. Kunitomo and Osaka have a lot in common and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. Kunitomo has a certain 'feel', but Osaka is generally more flashy and in your face. The wide brass band is one sign of Osaka, as are the brass animal plates. One possibility has to be that yours is a Settsu gun and the barrel was made by your Kunitomo-trained smith. He doesn't use the character 住 juu, for 'living in/at', so he may have been working in Osaka at the time. There were Kunitomo smiths resident, working and signing 国友 all over the country. On the other hand, the shape of this gun does not shout Osaka to me. It could well be Kunitomo.

And this is mine alongside some spears to give a sense of size and function...

With luck this should be a pic of the Yasukuni three-barrelled gun, in their museum for 150 years.

LOL at Ian. It's not just you. I have been to the Wallace Collection three times this year wanting to see among other things their gunnery room but it has always been locked 'for refurbishment'. Grrrrr...

Carlo, your pictures are so beautiful that I cannot possibly post my Chinese three-barrelled gun any more! There is nothing artistic about it, although historically it is of interest. Some years ago I went to Yasukuni and asked them to show me theirs, (never nowadays on display), which after some hesitation they very kindly did. They ushered me to a small viewing room and brought it out of the storeroom wearing white gloves, & even allowed me to take photos of it, so that I could compare it with my own! :lol:

Although, looking at it closely now, it looks like two different guns. I wondered what it was that was bothering me! Which one is your friend's, Carlo? As you know, the Japanese get quite stuffy about Zogan. If the piece is highly decorated then it's 'Hamamono', originally sold to rich Westerners 100/150 years ago. (Except for the highly-decorated ones owned by the top Daimyo in the best museums.) Decoration suggests the flowery middle period of Edo, or later additions to please foreigners. Even a Mon on the top of the barrel will be subjected to scrutiny, since many were slapped on later, and indeed continue to be so even today. (Not a cheap order, though, I hear.) Early guns tended to be plainer and more businesslike; then the latest castle matchlocks in the years before Commodore Perry arrived were again for the defense/defence of Japan. Thus we find the more plain but solid 'gunyouzutsu', carrying 300 years of refinement and evolution within the matchlock parameter. These are the ones that the Castle Matchlock Display Troops tend to search out.

Thanks for the headsup, Paul. Osafune is just down the road from here so I will make every effort to see that. It looks like I may have missed the Omamori-gatana exhibit which has moved on down to Kyushu. A pity as I have a rather nice koshirae-tsuki tanto example myself and wanted to find out more about them... This exhibition is still running. I wil pop in and see it tomorrow, and the photos, although it looks like the Mamorigatana are modern creations.

Bundle of fury, crime of passion? She could have done this with a kitchen knife, but no, she chose his precious sword, something he loved. An emotion building up inside her, it ruptured over some trivial thing, but she had already decided to use what would hurt him most. In other words premeditated, and therefore to be punished with the full force of the law. IMHO. If stupid politicians use this as an opportunity to push through new legislation indiscriminately on "Samurai Swords" then we are all losers.

Some lovely pictures here. I can see that I will have to jack up my camera skills before I post here. And Carlo, you have one of the rarest of the rare there by the looks of it. I have heard rumours of one, possibly two that are outside Japan, and one in Japan, and another couple of varieties that come up on auction that are very clever fakes. What book is that in your hand?

Aaarrgghh... too much and no time to look or reply. Oh.. oh... oh.... Friday evening and we're off to Mt Fuji in 20 mins for the weekend. All night drive to the circuit. Won't be able to see a computer until Monday! Will see the new GTR in GT500 guise, though! Tsuji is puzzling. Unless a large order to one of the Osaka/Negoro gunsmiths came through to Kunitomo and this was marked for them... gotta think on that one! The Settsu Shibatsuji èŠè¾» smiths used that character for example. Phone not rung yet so I've had another peek. Nice to see the unusual locksmith's mark there. There's an area to investigate. You have chosen not to polish the shinchu serpentine and lock. Are there a couple of characters on the barrel near the rear site, on the left, (jinshin bango?) Hope your pics are still up when I get back... Car still not here yet. So... Ian, I am most impressed that (and jealous) that you were with the Royal Armouries in Leeds. You must have a special brain, and extraordinary abilities. I've been making friends with the Wallace Collection people when I'm over in London. Our Castle Matchlock Company are the only one in Japan with all the members carrying and firing Tanzutsu or Bajouzutsu. They were very rare and I believe only India (?) and Japan ever made matchlock pistols. 100-1 type of ratio and only carried by higher ranks. We are taught to switch the burning match from our left arm to the right for firing the pistol. It would give that vital second shot if your enemy continued coming at you before you could reload your Tanegashima. There are quite a few very clever modern fakes going around, but extremely hard to find a good genuine one in working order because people will not sell them. They are generally more expensive than long guns, too, nowadays.

Well, that's good news! :lol: In the early days of pitched battles, mid 1500s, before gunnery tactics had been thoroughly worked out, the reloading gunners would get cut down by the kiba-tai samurai cavalry, so they were sandwiched by ashigaru with those long yari. And, art I think we can handle that too! :D Thanks Brian! PS Stephen. Some of those guns look good, but there are a few dodgy ones there at first glance! No 2 down of the long guns for example, looks like it's had the barrel and stock shortened for some reason, probably recently. Is there any way to get a closer look at them from all angles? Is there any paperwork with them?

Mmm... Thanks for the photos John. Stuff like that used to scare me, and I couldn't see what people saw in it, but I suppose it was designed to scare the enemy as much as anything. I like some of those bits! In piccie 2 the armor/armour is seated on a shogi. That's given me an idea to sit mine on a very nice shogi I bought a while back! (The wife might not be too happy...)

Gabriel, thank you. 1. I was happy and surprised to see that you have a real expert here called 'Nobody'. I like Nobody and his posts, and I hope he stays here. 2. My friend spent over a million dollars on priceless swords but in the long run found that the dealers made huge profits from his purchases and paid a lot less when he tried to cash them in. He says it's a mug's game, and it's full of 'Kitsune & Tanuki'. He even tries to stop me buying Tsuba. So, ssshhh... nowadays I have learned that this is one area where I will have to move silently and secretly whenever I see something that I really like. It's a pity, as he has such a vast and deep knowledge, but there is something bitter there. 3. Photos. Possibly, after I start to feel a little confidence here, a photo might be in order. Strictly blades, though! (I noticed in the intro blurb that anything to do with Samurai and that period are all right. Guns can be a slightly delicate area though... :lol: )

Interestingly we end up with three words for a gun, one being ju 銃　as in matchlock gun 火縄銃, one being tsutsu 筒 (tube) and one being teppo or tetsu po 鉄砲. My feeling is that the Chinese stuck with their word Bao/Pao (J po) and another word Qiang (fire lance) and the Japanese went more for alternative Kanji. One example is an early three-barrelled pole gun I have in my possession. It was created and used in China some time before Hideyoshi went to war there, and the Chinese called it a three-tubed Bao, or sanshinbao(J po). The Japanese warriors facing it in Korea and China called it a three-eyed gun, sanganju, or 三眼銃.

Ouch, John, that takes me to the limit of my passive knowledge and I feel an urge to go and double-check what comes to my fingertips. All fire-weapons can be traced back to ancient times, and the Chinese exercised thier imagination with how to send burning things at their enemies, as did the Romans and Greeks. I think the 'po' part of teppo (Chinese Bao/Pao) was a sort of bursting ball of gunpowder in a container (grenade) and the Mongols hurled these at the surprised Samurai defenders in Hakata Bay in Kyushu in the late 1200s. There's a famous painting of a horse being disembowelled by one. But thinking about what you have suggested, even these must have come conceptually from a burning ball. I think it's the tetsu- part of teppou, that suggests confining the flames in a container, /wood/paper/porcelain....maybe metal later. The next question is do you hurl the whole thing like a rocket, or do you discharge the contents and keep the cylinder?

Hello all. Just joined this site recently. The site is full of wisdom and knowledge and my essential aim is to learn from it, or should I say from you all. If I offend or annoy, that is generally not my intention, though I may bridle at someone's tone occasionally. Even though I am weak in the area of swords and fittings and even though my closest adviser and friend in Japan has warned me to stay clear of Nihonto, I find myself fascinated by them. Recently I have discovered that even though I speak, read and write Japanese fairly passably, I have trouble learning the vocabulary of arms and armor/armour straight from the Japanese Kanji, whereas I seem to be able to get closer to it and learn the language more quickly through English. (No hesitation for example on how such and such a Kanji is pronounced in a particular context or combination of words, since some kind soul has already done that work for me.) By the same token I have certain strengths which would normally become apparent in the course of posting. You must all be wondering who I am and where I come from; am I one of your stalkers/swindlers that I read about here, or will I be able to have a role to play here. Without wanting to say too much in this age of identity fraud, and not really wanting to post my true name or even initials (although I do understand the forum rules) I do want you to feel comfortable with me here, and I am willing to go towards that. So, and this is where I get hounded out, ... I've got my coat in one hand, ... deep breath...my main approach to Japanese arms has been through Tanegashima, Japanese matchlocks. I belong to a Castle Matchlock Company in Japan and have to dress in full Katchu several times a year. Most of us are antique collectors, and most of what we wear and display is genuine. Our guns are Edo or earlier and we use matchcord and black powder. If we wear a sword for a live display, however, in the saya will be the tsunagi, since a member of the public might possibly pull it out. Thank you for reading!

Try "Owari no Kuni, Kozenji" Run a Google in Japan on: Owari Kozenji Tsuba. Get this page with lots of references to Kozenji and Tsuba makers. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls= ... tnG=Search Japanese Wikipedia tells you what and where Owari is: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%BE% ... 5%E5%9B%BD

Thanks for the thoughts, Richard. I'll put them in my pipe and smoke them. I like the look of your Tsuba there, though. (The side holes look more functional than decorative, almost as though their function of allowing kogai and kozuka through without drawing the sword was just in the process of being discovered.)

This was mentioned by a sword/armor(-our) shop owner here in Japan the other day. (Someone that I trust generally.) I listened politely and filed the information for future query. What he said was that many of the old iron Muromachi tsuba were in fact born and used as solid discs of iron. Most of the sukashi was cut out in later years, ie in the Edo Period. (Except for the Sun and Moon Udenuki holes for the himo which tend to be original, as dropping your sword while mounted on a horse was probably not too clever.) Is this general knowledge and should I have read up on the site a bit more before posting? Puzzled in Paradise, Piers

The W is Yama! Yes, what a brilliant idea!

Just a guess. He was called Nakanishi, but so were a lot of other soldiers or officers. Their clothing and equipment were probably shipped somewhere. He wrote the first part of his name on the home-made baggage tag as Naka-, and the nishi (west) part he wrote in Roman letters, to help him find it more quickly. Other possibility that he was a Chusa 中佐or lieutenant Colonel, and his name was Wakabayashi or something beginning with W...