estcrh

Malcolm and Ron, there is a book which agrees with both of you in that it states that these images may not be entirely accurate (as Ron stated) due to the desire of individual schools of gunnery to keep certain aspects of their teaching secret (as Malcolm stated). So we have the possibility that certain images are just fantasy, or that they have been purposely drawn in a way that would fool the uninitiated, or that we just do not understand what is being represented in some illustrations. The book "Recreating Japanese Men" has quite a long discussion on these books, you can read some pages of it here (pages 32-36), from pages 36-44 there is an interesting discussion on guns in Japan during the Edo period. http://books.google.com/books?id=QqSSAYSig78C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=Inatomi+Ichimu&source=bl&ots=yUWHy6FsyO&sig=nsOFkDE-yNuZ8y4QL_e91hvqvYs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ll7IU9GjB4fP8wHp3oHIBQ&ved=0CFUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Inatomi%20Ichimu&f=false

Here is something interesting, seen by us the images from Japanese gunnery manuals sometimes seem far fetched but when you compare them to a similar European image your perspective can change.

Here is a rare example of a Japanese gunnery manual much like if not the same one I am posting pictures from. There are several good zoomable images from the book on the Bonhams site. Fine Japanese Art London, New Bond Street 16 May 2013 14:30 BST Auction 21101 Sold for £1,250 (US$ 2,140) inc. premium http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21101/lot/458/

Malcolm, looks like some front sights had the same set up, some of the scrolls I have seen go into great detail on targeting through various sights.

Ian, I just added about 25 very good quality, high resolution, detailed color images that I have not seen before from an Inatomi gun manual showing how to use the sights on matchlocks. Something I had not noticed before is the use of a removable sight that slid into the barrel sight closest to the butt. http://www.pinterest.com/worldantiques/ ... he-meiji-/

Well, this isn't a print, but appears to be a one-off original painting. It came "out of the blue" from a local auction in what appears to be a modern (i.e., recent) framing. It features two hunters with line-of-sight points on birds and other lines from parts of the bodies to explanatory notes. The work is 41cm x 19cm. A curious feature to me is that the text at the top of the work is upside down. It appears to be two separate images joined together before the red lines were drawn, then folded into four as in a "brochure" style. I'm wildly guessing this is Meiji period because of the bright green colours (aniline dyes??) and of course the foxing indicates age, but what?? I note the presence of numbers and katakana but have not done any work on translation. I put it here for interest re the matchlocks and if anyone cares to translate the text i'm sure we will all be the wiser. Anyway, FWIW here are some images. Bestests, BaZZa. This is the type of illustration seen in Japanese gunnery manuals.

Here is a link to a few more prints and drawings showing firearms. http://www.pinterest.com/worldantiques/ ... he-meiji-/

A few similar ones.

Ed, thank for posting this, a very interesting gun, especially if it is established that it is Japanese made.

"Obscure" would seem to be a rather relative term as undoubtedly the more one studies the larger one's vocabulary becomes and fewer "obscurities" are encountered. Personally, I have found that while it is easier to simply use English "equivalents", learning and using the correct Japanese words often times leads to deeper insights not only into the item of study but into the language and culture as well. Chris, I agree with your perspective completely, for me the act of searching for these "obscure" terms can lead to knowledge about something else, I can not count how many time I have searched for an obscure term and found something that I would not have found other wise (an image, text etc). When using these "obscure" words in a place were people are not knowledgeable on the subject I do try to add the English equivalent in brackets (...) or quotes "...".

I do see 種子島火縄銃 (tanagashima matchlock) being used in Japan to differentiate between Japanese matchlocks and non Japanese matchlocks.

Darcy, Ebay has been made aware of this particular practice by several different sources and it seems that as long a a buyer either gets their purchase or a refund Ebay does not consider this to be a policy violation, and your right, that drop down list makes it very hard to report this type of thing. This company is just one of several that attempts to sell items that are being currently being auctioned in Japan.

This is the prologue to the Mr Sugawa's book, he specifically points out that he is not a scholar.

Justin, there is a big difference between someone looking for a particular mei in an already created list with the kanji there for someone to find as opposed to attempting a translation of a complicated book, especially if the book is written in older style kanji. Since you have already translated some of the tanegashima related kanji maybe you could post a list so that people who are interested in doing their own hunt and peck research could learn from what you have already learned.

Ron, would you apply that to swords as well, no more "nihonto", we will say that we are interested in Japanese swords, no more "koshirae" instead we will say scabbard, no "mei" just signature, and with armor we will say helmet instead of "kabuto", cuirass instead of dou?

Something is not quite right with this one. Whats up with this???

Brian, I have found that translators are no good for cut and paste kanji, instead I paste the kanji to search bar (using Chrome browser) and the results are automatically translated and highlighted, I then save the kanji and the translation for future reference or searches. Take this book for instance, (鉄砲と日本人 : 「鉄砲神話」が隠してきたこと / Teppō to Nihonjin : "teppō shinwa" ga kakushite kita koto by 鈴木眞哉, 1936- Masaya Suzuki). When I paste this kanji (鉄砲と日本人) into my Chrome browser and do a search I get this as the translation (Japanese and gun). Here is an image I found when doing an image search using the same kanji. Here is a link to some kanji and an explanation of what images will come up if they are pasted into a search bar. http://nihon-no-katchu.proboards.com/th ... arch-terms For example, if you paste this kanji (火縄銃射撃の実演) to a search bar you will see some great matchlock demonstration photographs.

Blaise, how about posting the information you got from the seller and the price. Knowing how the seller describes it and the price would be helpful.

Brian, thanks for reminding me about this book, for some reason I have not seen it mentioned since the thread you pointed out. Brian I should have been clearer in my meaning, I was referring to the book titles, since just about every Japanese term for firearms is contained in the titles of these books the kanji can be cut and pasted into a search engine in order to bring up images and articles that are only available in Japanese, take this book for example "大砲入門： 陸軍兵器徹底研究。.Taihō nyūmon : rikugun heiki tettei kenkyū. by 佐山二郎 Jirō Sayama", if you take this kanji (陸軍兵器) from the title and pasting it into a search engine you can find images of artillery and cannon. if you paste this kanji (大砲入門) into a search engine you get images of Cannon cameras and cannon/artillery etc. If you take the title of this book 古銃 /Ko jū. by Shin'ichi Yoshioka; and do a search with the kanji (古銃) you get some good images of various types of pistols. You can find these books for sale in Japan by pasting the kanji for the book title into a search engine.

How about a little insight or even a few images so we can see what is in this book, it sounds interesting.

Thanks Piers, any idea of the original date this book was published?

Peter my all means if anyone has a book to add please do, I have not heard of this book but it looks interesting, do you have it?

A couple of questions, is it Taira Sawada or is it Sawada Taira, I have seen his names spelled both ways, when was his book first published? Thanks to Justin for providing these images, for Non-Japanese speaking people its important to be able to see if there is something in this book that would interest them despite not being able to easily understand the text. From these images I think this book would be a great candidate for a translation project.

I have used mink oil on old Japanese leather items with no problems, try whatever you use on a small area first of course.

Some info on the author, hopefully I got it right, from a recent interview. http://sankei.jp.msn.com/west/west_affa ... 005-n1.htm He is a martial artist and learned ninjutsu 40 years ago under Nawa YumiTakeshi who is a master of ninjutsu, he started a Ninjutsu Academy in Yagyu district of Nara Sakahara town were many different ninjutsu skills are taught. He is an appraiser on a popular television show (Kanteidan) which seems to be the Japanese version of the Antiques road show. Born in Osaka 1935, went to Kinki University School of Law, Kansai Medical School, and served as director of Sawada Osteopathic Academy of Osaka Higashinari Ward, presided over Sakai gun Study Group and is a student of science and technology in the Edo period.