Depends on your definition of "the Japanese". tl;dr while the general populace didn't see much of cannon or musket, that was more because of the two-hundred-yea

Depends on your definition of "the Japanese". tl;dr while the general populace didn't see much of cannon or musket, that was more because of the two-hundred-year-long peace Japan had known since the Tokugawa unification. The weapons (obsolete by Western standards) existed in massive stockpiles and were continually manufactured. When it came to infantry weapons, Japanese warfare in the Sengoku period was dominated by matchlock muskets (originally knockoffs of Portuguese models made in Tanegashima, which later caused all Japanese-made matchlocks to be called "Tanegashima"). Specifically, once individual firearms arrived in Japan the country quickly came up with a local version of the European pike-and-shot tactics of the same era (early 17th century). Once the country had been unified (and had failed in its attempt to conquer Korea, which had less effective land-based weapons but more effective naval cannon), the large-scale conflicts that necessitated use of firearms ceased. Cannons and muskets were stockpiled in warehouses, and occasionally pulled out for military drills, but were unfamiliar to the general populace. From The Wiki, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanegashima_(gun) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanegashima_(gun): > From the mid 17th century, Japan decided to close itself to interaction with the West (except for the Dutch) through its policy of Sakoku. Contrary to popular belief, this did not lead to Japan "giving up the gun." If anything, the gun was used less frequently because the Edo Period did not have many large-scale conflicts in which a gun would be of use. Often the sword was simply the more practical weapon in the average small-scale conflicts. It should also be noted that isolation did not decrease the production of guns in Japan—on the contrary, there is evidence of around 200 gunsmiths in Japan by the end of the Edo Period. But the social life of firearms had changed: as the historian David L. Howell has argued, for many in Japanese society, the gun had become less a weapon than a farm implement for scaring off animals. With no external enemies for over 200 years, tanegashima were mainly used by samurai for hunting and target practice, the majority were relegated to the arms store houses of the various feudal lords (daimyōs). Similarly to the rest of Northeast Asia (Korea and China especially), Japan entered the colonial era not with an iron-age level of military technology - swords and spears - but with an early-modern level - matchlock muskets and muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons.