Takashima Shūhan

Takashima Shūhan (高島秋帆^?, 1798–1866) was a Japanese samurai and military engineer. He is significant in having started to import flintlock guns from the Netherlands at the end of Japan's period of Seclusion, during the Late Tokugawa Shogunate. Throughout his life Takashima Shūhan was one of those early Japanese reformists who argued for the modernization of Japan in order to better resist the West. His experience was close to that of Sakuma Shōzan, who was also attacked for adopting Western ideas.

As a child of 10, Takashima Shūhan, the son of Nagasaki officials, was shocked by the violent demands made by the British frigate Phaeton in 1808. Takashima started to study Western guns and, after the 1825 Edict to expel foreigners at all cost ("Don't think twice" policy, 異国船無二念打払令), managed to obtain some weapons through the Dutch at Dejima, such as field guns, mortars and firearms. The guns were known in Japan as Geweer (gun in Dutch) from the 1840s.

Various domains sent students to learn from Takashima in Nagasaki. They came from Satsuma Domain, after the intrusion of an American warship in 1837 in Kagoshima Bay, and from Saga Domain and Chōshū Domain, both southern domains exposed to Western intrusions. These domains also studied the manufacture of Western weapons, and by 1852 Satsuma and Saga had reverbatory furnaces to produce the iron necessary for firearms.

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