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Osaka, that in that place alone more than 40 thousand piculs of copper were smelted yearly. Since 1859 the export of pure copper seems to have largely declined.[1]
Japanese Bronzes.
The Japanese name for bronze is Kara-kane (Chinese metal) and shows that the art of smelting this alloy was originally taken from the Chinese. Japanese bronzes contain copper and tin as the chief constituents, together with a little lead or zinc.
Although Chinese bronze must have been known in Japan for a very long time, still the art of casting bronze guns and muskets must undoubtedly have been learned by the Japanese from the first Europeans with whom they came in contact, (the Portuguese, English and Dutch.)
The Japanese historians[2] without exception, give to the “Nan Ban Jin” (Europeans) the honour of inventing fire-arms and contradict the common report in Europe that the Chinese were the first to discover gunpowder and fire-arms. The prince of Bungo was the first one in Japan who possessed fire-arms, a few being presented to him by the crew of an European (Portuguese?) vessel, which happened to come to Funai in his province. In the year 1543 the manufacture of gunpowder and the handling of fire-arms was taught to the Japanese by the crew of a Portugese ship which happened to anchor near the island of Tanega-shima. It is probable that this is the same vessel in which Ferdinand Mendez Pinto came to Japan. The Japanese, however, speak in their history of two Portuguese named Mura-shuku-sha and Krista Mota[3] as the persons who first brought in the knowledge of gunpowder and fire-arms. There still exists among the Japanese a kind of fire-arm called “Tanegashima.”
The clever pilot William Adams who came to Japan in 1600 as first mate of the Dutch ship de Liefde, and who
