> Could a samurai warrior use firearms on the field of battle in any time i=
n their history, without loss of honor?
If I might offer a personal opinion I think the short answer to this is 'ye=
s'. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself was
apparently a good shot (as much as it was possible to be) - but even if not=
, he took time to learn how to use
the weapon and if it was OK by him it would have been okay by everyone. Com=
bat samurai (pre 1600) were
far more pragmatic than the image we have today, and samurai honour, as a c=
ode that was lived rather than
paid lip-service, reached its lowest ebb just prior to the emergence of the=
Oda/Hideyoshi/Tokugawa
triumvirate. In those days anything went, as long as you won. The emergence=
of strong leaders and a unified
country probably did most to bring about a restructuring of the warrior eth=
ic. The later Edo Jidai under
Tokugawa rule completely remodelled the ideals of the samurai, and that is =
the image commonly held today.
There are pictures of samurai using firearms (although not many tales), but=
I think the honour ethic (which
existed as the exception, rather than the rule) was primarily based on the =
samurai's traditional weapons. The
problem with firearms is that the early models only really worked when used=
en masse which made up for their
inaccuracy, and a skilled individual warrior would have felt safer with a w=
eapon he could rely on, and you could
not really rely on an arquebus. Especially when battlefields often develope=
d into chaotic close combat melées.
If a samurai wanted to make a name for himself on the battlefield, the spea=
r was the thing.
Thomas