By 1600, the Japanese possessed more rifles than any other nation in the world, and better ones at that. Firearms reached Japan with the arrival of two Portuguese adventurers armed with arquebuses aboard a Chinese trading ship in 1543. The Japanese were so impressed that they immediately began mass production and improved the technology. 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.
