Tanegashima

The tanegashima, also called hinawaju or matchlock gun, was a snap matchlock arquebus used by samurai and ashigaru foot soldiers in Japan. It reached Japan in 1543 when a Chinese junk carrying two Portuguese traders was driven by a storm to the island of Tanegashima; the weapon's design derived from snap matchlocks produced in the Portuguese armory at Goa in India. The local lord, Tanegashima Tokitaka, bought two of the muskets and commissioned a swordsmith to copy them, and a Portuguese blacksmith later helped solve the technical problem of drilling a helical barrel. Within a few years the tanegashima had changed the way war was fought in Japan, although it never fully displaced the bow because of its slower rate of fire and vulnerability to wet weather.