Samurai Arquebusiers

[D.Sebastian]

Were there specialized groups of samurai arquebusiers during the Sengoku Jidai, or were all samurai trained to use guns?

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

There were some specialized troops under the Mori, Azai, Takeda, Uesugi and Oda in the Oda Nobunaga period that is.
In the armies of Nobunaga many of them were actually Ashigaru who were trained as arquebusiers. In the very start of guns in Japan, many ashigaru were trained to use guns but also doubled as Yari Ashigaru which were not specialized and thus weaker; in very small numbers like 50 to 100 guys in an army.

[shikken]

Samurai arquebuses were a little different from ashigaru arquebuses. For starters the barrel of an ashigaru arquebus is usually composed of only one sheet of wrought iron hammered around a metal pole into barrel, then the seam is then forge welded. Samurai arquebuses were instead more expensively composed of an additional barrel or two composing of a long thin strip wrapped in a spiral formation around the first barrel and wielded together but starting from opposite directions. Larger arquebuses would have even more wrappings to increase the integrity of the barrel. In this regard (there are several other regards) Japanese guns were superior to European ones. Samurai arquebuses were also typical of a high caliber of 10 monme about 37.5 grams shot, ashigaru arquebuses were only 2 to 2.5 monme. There were also much heavier samurai guns in use but more rarely fielded.

[shikken]

Also I read that samurai arquebusiers tended to pick their targets more than ashigaru arquebusiers.