Quote Originally Posted by wolflance View Post
As for cannon, Japan's heavily forested mountainous terrain makes heavy artillery unfeasible, so they didn't feel the need to mass-adopt. They also had enough trouble providing ammo for their matchlocks (Japan does not produce saltpeter naturally, and produces very little lead. Luckily they knew how to make saltpeter out of urine...)
There's a bit more to it than that. Many of the really important castles were constructed on the floodplains, the economic centres of feudal Japan (hence controlling significant concentrations of wealth). So it's not just about getting to hilltop castles.

Just in general the Japanese seem to have escewed heavy siege weaponry, not just cannon, even though they knew about them and occasionally made use of such. Even when such things could be more easily used.

In the last stages of Sengoku Jidai both the Western and Eastern armies got hold of any cannon they could and merchant vessels with cannon would often have any cannon "bought" by the Japanese. And the siege of Osaka used quite a few on both sides, though much lighter than what would have been the case in Europe.

I would point out Japanese castles were generally much weaker structurally than European counterparts. And much weaker to escalades due to their construction. Basically you lack the high vertical and solid stone walls European castles had to stop people 1) climbing over and 2) smashing through. Being an earthquake prone area made the European style pretty much unfeasible and their solution to earthquake resistance dictated a lot of castle design.
They were also very vulnerable to fire (being largely constructed from wood) and many a castle taking ended with the whole thing burning accidentally or not.

Something that may also matter is how an European castle is usually one major fixed point whereas Japanese fortifications could be more of an mutually supportive chain of smaller fortifications. A factor of the generally mountainous terrain to a large degree I'm sure. So not only is it a bit difficult to get siege equipment in palce, you have to redo it 3-4 times for the same general area.

Somewhat impacting on tactics I'd say is also the social/cultural aspects of the samurai, without myth-bushidoing this. There were strong economic incentives (rewards for acts of bravery and "glory") to go for a more costly storming than just trying to burn the whole thing down around the defenders. As mentioned earlier compared to a European castle it was generally much easier and less suicidal to try.

It's an interesting question, because despite having options direct assault after a storm of arrows and shot tended to be the go to option. They definitely knew about and probably had the technology to make some, they just seem to large have stopped using it. IIRC might have been tied into the samurai coalecing as a class. About the time armies went from being government affairs to more "privatized" rent-an-soldier types as the samurai started out as.