[commando552]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

Well, the Tanegashima was pretty standardized for its time. The Japanese did not export the weapon either (it was a major military asset of theirs, first in intra-national conflict, and then again when it came time to invade Korea during the Imjin War), so it behooved the Japanese to keep it to themselves. From what I can tell, unlike their European and American counterparts, they stuck with the Tanegashima for a long time instead of fiddling with and improving the design or adopting new firearm technologies (such as wheellock and flintlock guns) until their 19th Century intra-national Boshin war, where they imported foreign firearms en masse, and then afterwards started copying foreign designs for their upcoming Imperialist endeavours.

From what I have seen there was a lot of variation with the Tanegashima over time. Both this and this are Tanegashimas but as you can see there is a big difference between the two. I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that Tanegashima was simply the name applied to Japanese matchlocks (which tended to look vaguely similar due to the style, just how European ones would look similar), hell, you even find stuff described as a "Tanegashima Pistol" which is very different in form and appearance.

And we already have pages for Wheellock and Matchlock guns right now, those being rather un-standardized.

I'll refer you to my earlier post (post #4) as I have already given my opinion on this before, but the difference between a wheellock musket and a handgonne/hand cannon/hand bombard/whatever you want to call it is pretty big. The general observer will look at a matchlock or wheellock and think it is a gun, so it is worth categorising them on actor pages and media pages where they appear, if for no other reason than to educate people and to prevent misidentification. Nobody is going to look at a hand bombard and think "That's a Brown Bess right?".

Also, there is never going to be a real handgonne in a film or TV series, it is always going to be a mock up so essentially a tube that someone is holding a match to.

If more pages for works with Handgonnes come in, then what's one more firearm page compiling the appearances of "western" and "eastern" ones?

It isn't so much the prospect of having a page for handgonnes that I have a problem with, it is the fact that I do not think we want pages on the wiki where the only handheld firearm that is listed is a handgonne, which is questionable at best and in my opinion inelligible. If there are otherwise eligible peices of media that feature handgonnes then they can be listed on that page, but I am dubious of the need for them to have a page of their own at this point.