Pattern 1853 Enfields sold to Japan After American Civil War

Larryh86GT

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Jan 20, 2018
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Near sunny Buffalo New York
I found this to be interesting. They could be floating around Japan or China.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_1853_Enfield

"After the end of the war, hundreds of formerly Confederate Enfield 1853 muskets were sold from the American arms market to the Tokugawa shogunate, as well as some prominent Japanese domains including Aizu and Satsuma. These units would later be used in the Boshin War, and some remaining in Satsuma would also be used by rebelling former samurai in the Satsuma Rebellion about a decade later. "
 
I doubt it was solely Confederate Enfields sold to Japan, the US had no further use of them, for the most part. I really like the movie "The Last Samurai", but I think having so many muzzle stuffers may have been off, and having the Japanese Army having M1871/84 Mausers was plenty off, but I think they found a decent stash somewhere of the Mausers, and considering the scarcity in large numbers of the guns really used by the Japanese in the Boshin War its forgivable.

As for other weapons sold off by the US to Japan and used in that period, apparently some Starr Carbines found their way over there and I think, (my memory on the matter ain't working at this time) quite a bit of CW imported smoothbore muskets, along with a number, probably small, of Spencers. Also the US sold the French-built CSS Stonewall to Japan, who renamed it Kotetsu.

As for Japan's other weaponry I think the British Snider was the most plentiful of breechloaders and foreign weapons, other guns used by them were a number of French rifle-muskets, (France had a big military mission to Japan in those days), and I remember reading somewhere that something like 2,000 Chassepots were sold to Japan at some point. This is all going off of memory after studying what was used years ago without taking notes, so I'm probably wrong somewhere.
 
Francis Bannerman did not discriminate. If you hand the cash he had the guns.
 
As I understand it, the Japanese purchased large numbers of 'Enfield' rifles from multiple sources, and the vast majority were later modified into cartridge conversions of various types. 'Japanese Imported Arms of the Early Meiji Era', edited by Joseph P. Koss is a good reference. http://www.banzaionline.com/Books/NavalSpec.htm#Top_Naval_Special

David
 
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