East Asia
In Japan the pattern of military development was somewhat different from that in Europe or the Middle East. Soon after contact with Portuguese traders in the year 1543, firearms were adopted in the nation and an era of gunpowder warfare followed for several decades, culminating at the famous Battle of Nagashino in 1575, where volley fire was introduced. The Japanese under Toyotomi Hideyoshi also used firearms against the Koreans and Chinese during the Imjin War of the 1590s, which proved effective, yet the Chinese and Koreans matched this with farther-range cannon fire.
Once the Japanese home islands were unified in the early 17th century, the Tokugawa Shogunate launched an effort to solidify the power of the feudal samurai class and banned the use and manufacture of all firearms (as well as repairs to feudal castles). Between the seventeenth and late 19th centuries Japanese warfare remained medieval and its society feudal in nature.
Read more about this topic: Early Modern Warfare
Famous quotes containing the words east and/or asia:
“The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these points.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[N]o combination of dictator countries of Europe and Asia will halt us in the path we see ahead for ourselves and for democracy.... The people of the United States ... reject the doctrine of appeasement.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)