Tanegashima Tokitaka

Tanegashima Tokitaka was born in 1528, the son of Tanegashima Ashishige, lord of Tanegashima Island in Ōsumi Province (present-day Kagoshima Prefecture), and became the 14th head of the Tanegashima clan. In 1543, a Chinese ship carrying Portuguese traders drifted ashore at Cape Kadokura on the southern tip of the island. Tokitaka was captivated by the matchlock firearms the Portuguese carried and is said to have paid an extraordinary sum to purchase two of them.

He immediately ordered his retainer, the swordsmith Yaita Kinbei Kiyosada, to reverse-engineer and domestically produce the weapon. After much trial and error — including working out the mechanism of the screw thread — Japan's first domestically manufactured firearms are said to have been produced the following year, 1544. Tanegashima-made guns soon spread to smithing communities such as Negoro in Kii and Sakai in Izumi, and from there rapidly across the whole of Japan; the word 'Tanegashima' itself became a byword for the firearm.

The arrival of this new weapon fundamentally transformed the character of Sengoku-era warfare, culminating in battles such as Nagashino where firearms overturned sword-centered combat doctrine. Tokitaka is remembered as a pivotal figure in Japanese military history for this reason. He died in 1579 at the age of 52. That the decision of a minor lord on a remote southern island could shape the entire trajectory of the Sengoku period makes his story a singular one, still highly regarded today.