Don't let the Chinese characters fool you! I bought an original Japanese matchlock musket a few years ago, the underside of the barrel was covered in stamped characters, in addition to some ink-written ones along the barrel channel.
Assuming they were Japanese I showed them to a Japanese speaking friend at work who told me they were not Japanese, but Chinese.
I also knew people who spoke Chinese, & they were able to tell me what some of characters said, but weren't able to recognize others. My next step was to send a copy of the writing to the Chinese department of the University of Washington Department of Asian Languages.
I just told them that the writing was from an old Chinese rifle. In his reply, a Professor of Classical Chinese gave a fairly comprehensive translation of the characters, though there were still some that he was unfamiliar with (probably firearm-specific terms). Interestingly though, he asked if there was any chance of the musket being of Japanese make saying:
While the inscriptions are all, to be sure, written in Chinese, it would not be unusual to have Chinese inscriptions on a Japanese rifle of the nineteenth century, & there are certain (grammatical) features that suggest Japanese provenance.
Also, the dating system used on my musket is kind of vague. The characters say it was made in the fourth month of the
yi-mao year which would date it as either 1765, 1795, 1855, or any other date, before or after, in 60-year increments. Knowing that the Japanese used matchlocks for many, many years it makes it hard to pin down, but I suspect mine may be either 1795 or 1855.
Anyway, my point here is don't let the apparent language used on the gun be the determining factor in deciding were it originated, or was used by. Good luck in your search.
