The Samurai warfare during the Sengoku period (1467 - 1573) required large quantities of armour for growing armies of foot soldiers (ashigaru).
Munition quality dou or dō (breast plates) from tatami dou (foldable) to these single piece dou....
The durmmer is wearing a forehead protector (hachi-gane)
In in early years, matchlocks were slow and cumbersome,
an archer could fire 15 arrows in the time a gunner could load, charge, and shoot,
Effective range also was only 80 to 100 m at which distance, bullets easily bounced off armour.
Matchlocks were vulnerable to humid or rainy conditions.
However firearms could be manned effectively by farmers or non-samurai low-ranking soldiers.
With improvements and serial firing technique, bigger calibers etc,
in 1567 Takeda Shingen rightfully announced that
"Hereafter, the guns will be the most important arms"
At the Battle of Nagashino in 1575, 3,000 arquebusiers helped win the battle,
the samurai(s) became so enthusiastic that they produced more firearms than any other European country at that time.
They also used guns in the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592,
in which about a quarter of the invasion force of 160,000 were gunners.
so successful that they captured Seoul in just 18 days after their landing at Pusan.
