Tanegashima: The Island Where Myth and Reality Come Together in the Portuguese Rifle

Abstract

Fernão Mendes Pinto in his work "Peregrinação" refers that in 1543 a storm pushed the junk where he traveled with other Portuguese to the island of Tanegashima in Japan, a country where no European had been before. It was during this meeting that the Japanese came into contact with the rifles that the Portuguese were carrying and of which they were unaware of their existence, starting to use them in disputes between them, thus managing to unify the country. This event is celebrated annually in Tanegashima in a touching and surprising way that perhaps caused admiration even to the imaginative Fernão Mendes Pinto.