Japanese Matchlock, by Tristan Morrison

How did this seventeenth-century Japanese matchlock get to Springfield, Illinois? Known in Japan as a Tanegashima, this gun was made in the 1600s as an official firearm in the service of the military rulers of Japan. But during the peaceful Edo period, weapons like this one had little opportunity to serve as a weapon. Instead they became symbols of masculinity and status, as only certain men were allowed to have them. After Japan had its borders opened by America and Europe in the 1850s, this weapon no longer served a military purpose as newer and better weapons became available. And so this firearm's identity changed to antique as it was sold to firearms collector and historian Frank Reed Grover, whose son donated it to the Illinois State Museum in 1926.