Japanese Spencer New Model rifle...

[Len]

This rifle came into a local gun shop a while back. I expressed interest in it at that time but the shop's owner said he'd be keeping it for his collection. Last week he called me to say it was mine if I wanted it. It's a New Model Spencer made in 1868 I think. It's in ok shape with a tad bit of the exterior case hardening still on the receiver and it has an excellent bore. It has Japanese kanji engraved on the receiver which I'm told read "#140 Meiji 27 (1894) Saga Prefecture". The rifle might have originally entered Japan to arm the Forces of the Emperor Meiji during the Boshin War of 1868-69 fought against the Shogun. Here are some pics.

Len
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[ebeeby]

Way cool. Way.

[da gimp]

agreed, it's a dern neat piece, congrats.

[Oyaji]

Just consulted with my Japanese language expert re the inscription.

Left column transcribes as:

San - thee
Ichi - one
Yon/shi - four
Zero - zero

Right column transcribes:

Meiji - Meiji Era
Ni - two
Nana - seven

(The twenty seventh year of Meiji's throne would be 1894/95)

Bottom transcription is Saga Ken which is a prefecture adjacent to Nagasaki on the southernmost main Japanese island of Kyushu.

[Griff Murphey]

Turner Kirkland recalled how GI's were permitted to loot museum guns under the watchful eyes of US MPs. I believe he took home a trapdoor. Perhaps this Spencer was similarly liberated....

[jon_norstog]

Len,

Your 1868 Spencer may have arrived a little late for the Boshin War, hard to tell. Wikipedia says that the Tosa domain troops got Spencers and Satsuma got Smith and Wesson revolvers in time for the fighting. That war lasted from JaNUary 1868 through the fall of Edo in October, with fighting in the north until march of 1869. A lot of foreign military hardware got sold to both sides, including the ironclad former CSS Stonewall and at least three Gatling guns. A key figure in the arms trade was a Jardine Matheson agent named Thomas Glover.

Saga prefecture was a domain at the time, in the south. The samurai of Saga, along with Satsuma, Tosa and Choshu threw their lot in with the Meiji against the Shogun. So if your rifle was there. it was used by that side. Later on the samurai rebelled against the Meiji a number of times. Saga rebelled in 1874, and your rifle may have seen action on one side or the other. The Saga revolt was crushed in a month, but unrest continued until the 1878 Satsuma War - the last stand of the samurai class. If your rifle saw action there it was probably on the Meiji side. The Meiji threw every man and every weapon at its disposal into that fight.

One upshot of all this was Japan decided it needed its own arms industry and chose the Murata rifle as its first in-country produced military rifle.

What you have there, Len, is definitely a piece of history.

jn