Type 99 Rifle

Origins

Colonel Nariakira Arisaka's commission gave Japan its first modern rifles in the 1890s, and the Type 38 of 1905, in 6.5x50mm, served through the Russo-Japanese War's aftermath and the invasion of China. The 6.5mm round was pleasant to shoot and adequate against men, but the Army in China wanted a cartridge that would hit harder at range and could be shared with the 7.7mm Type 92 heavy machine gun, and in 1939 — the Japanese imperial year 2599, hence "99" — it adopted a rimless 7.7x58mm cartridge and a new rifle for it. The Type 99 was intended to replace the Type 38 entirely; war production never allowed it, and both served to the end.

Design & Construction

The Type 99 is a Mauser-derived bolt action with a two-lug bolt, a large safety knob at the rear that is turned by the palm, and a five-round staggered magazine loaded from stripper clips; its action is among the strongest ever put in a service rifle, a fact American testers established after the war by firing it with proof loads that wrecked other designs. The standard short rifle has a 25.9-inch barrel and weighs about 8.2 pounds; a long rifle with a 31.4-inch barrel was made in small numbers early on. Novel features included a chrome-plated bore to resist corrosion in the tropics, a sliding breech cover, a folding wire monopod under the forend, and a rear sight with folding arms graduated for leading aircraft, all of which were dropped as the war went badly. The "last-ditch" rifles of 1944-45 have unfinished stocks, crude sights, no chrome and sometimes cast-iron buttplates, and are unsafe to fire with full loads.

Combat Use

The Type 99 armed the Japanese infantry of the Pacific war from Malaya, Bataan and Guadalcanal to the Philippines, including the Battle of Corregidor, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and it was a good rifle in the hands of a soldier trained to use it, accurate and reliable and mounted with a long Type 30 bayonet in the World War II's most bayonet-minded army. Its weakness was Japanese logistics: two rifle cartridges, and a third rimmed 7.7mm for the Navy, complicated supply until the end. Chrysanthemum-marked receivers, the emperor's mark of ownership, were ground off rifles surrendered in 1945, and the presence of an intact "mum" is the first thing a collector looks for.

Legacy

After 1945 the Type 99 had an unexpected afterlife. Thousands were converted to .30-06 for the South Korean constabulary and fought in the Korean War; Indonesia used them in its war of independence; and hundreds of thousands came home in American duffel bags, making the Arisaka the most common Japanese rifle in the United States. It was the Japanese Army's answer to the Lee-Enfield Rifle and the M1903 Springfield, and a sound one, undone by the war around it.