Firearms reached Japan with the arrival of two Portuguese adventurers armed with arquebuses aboard a Chinese commercial cargo ship. The Japanese were so impressed that they immediately began mass production, improved the technology, and by 1600 possessed more rifles than any other nation in the world, and even better ones. But then, in 1600, samurai with their katanas were the symbol of power, and rifles were a foreign invention, so the samurai-controlled government reduced rifle production, then required a government license, then banned non-government production, then reduced the quantity, until Japan was virtually without firearms. All this changed abruptly when Japan reopened to the West with the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853.
