Preliminary Study of Pedigree and Origin of Japanese Traditional Farmers Rocket

摘要

This paper based on the Investigation Report on A Study of Worldwide Bamboo Rockets and the Pedigree and Origin of Japanese Traditional Farmers Rocket Ryusei, contracted by Yoshida town, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, to the Field Work Institute ,in JFY2004. The Institute organized eleven members Investigation Committee, including author and co-authors. The report covers the main point of worldwide bamboo rockets including the existing six Japanese farmers rocket Ryusei, based on questionnairs field works and available historiographies, records, as well as the analysis with consideration of its history, specification, structure, manufacture, launch festival and others. In particular, the pedigree and origin of Ryusei have been investigating a long time by each Ryusei Preservation Group, it is not clear. Therefore, it remains the most interested theme to be studied. Since the first introduction of matchlocks at Tanegashima Id. in 1543, the mid Era of Domestic War (1467-1615), a number of domestic matchlocks were rapidly manufactured, and then Era of War was finally ended and Japan entered to National Isolation Era or Era of Edo (now, Tokyo) or Era of Tokugawa Syogunate, in which the general people were prohibited to have matchlocks and other guns, by the law. This paper show that how surplus guns and black powders were changed to Hanabi(fireworks), rocket-type Ryusei Hanabi and finally Ryusei itself, in order to thank and pray a more rice harvest to the Shinto shrine of each farmers village, and the pedigree and origin of each Ryusei are shown, under some hypotheses based on the facts of introduction of matchlocks and another import route of saltpeters to Tokugawa Syogunate leyasu. Hereafter, those hypotheses are to be verified not only domestically ,but also internationally, in particular with Mr. F. H. Winter, National Air and Space Museum (NASM), USA, who has been studying Japanese Ryusei.