and often they’re complete with a cleaning rod under the barrel. All have smoothbored barrels and are chambered for the 6.5mm Japanese blank or training cartridge. The barrel may be a worn out one salvaged from a regular Type 38 rifle and then bored out smooth, or merely a piece of tubing screwed into the heavier (reinforced) breech end of the barrel.
Most 6.5mm training rifles have a cast or forged iron receiver, the upper tang integral with it. Often the outside finish of these receivers is very rough. Some have a receiver made of steel tubing with the rear tang welded on. Practically all have the receiver grooved for the sliding breech cover, and a couple of them I examined had these covers. All have a rough cast trigger guard with an integral lower tang. Instead of a rear guard screw, these actions usually employed a tang screw connecting the two tangs. On one rifle I examined, only the barrel bands held the barrel and action in the stock and two wood screws held the trigger guard and magazine in place.
I have seen three different types of bolts and receivers in these training rifles. One had a standard pattern bolt with dual-opposed locking lugs which engaged in the receiver ring, and was fitted with the standard long, non-rotating extractor. Another had a bolt with thin dual-opposed locking lugs which engaged in the receiver ring, but with a thin spring extractor mortised in the bolt body and extending through a slot through the right locking lug. The last one had no forward locking lugs, the extractor fitted in the bolt head, and a rib on the bolt which engaged forward of the receiver bridge to hold the action closed. All of these bolts appeared to be castings.
These training rifles can usually be identified by their smooth bores, but the surest method is to remove the barrel and action from the stock, and if the tang is integral with the receiver, or welded in place, then you know for certain that it is a training rifle. Regardless of the type of bolt it has, these rifles should never be fired with bulleted ammunition or the action used for building a rifle.
Markings
Regular issue Japanese military bolt-action rifles in calibers 6.5 and 7.7mm have the Japanese imperial seal stamped on the top forward part of the receiver. This seal is round, up to about 7/ 16” in diameter, and resembles a sunflower or daisy blossom with sixteen petals. It is often referred to as the “rising sun” or “chrysanthemum” marking. On many Japanese rifles this seal has been partly or entirely ground away, indicating these particular rifles were surrendered. Rifles with the seal untouched were generally captured arms.
The Japanese Hook Safety action. Note: The bolt handle on this action is not original. The original bolt handle has a straight shank, oval-shaped grasping knob and it projects straight out to the right when the action is closed, straight up when the action is open.
Japanese Hook Safety Action
General Specifications
Type . . . . . . . . .Turnbolt repeater operated by bolt handle.
Receiver . . . . . .One-piece steel construction, mostly round with no prominent recoil lug.
Bolt . . . . . . . . . .Two-piece; rotating bolt body with dual-opposed forward locking lugs and separate non-rotating bolt head. Root of bolt handle serves as an auxiliary locking lug.
Ignition . . . . . . .One-piece striker (firing pin), coil mainspring, cocks on closing the bolt.
Magazine . . . . .Staggered-column, non-detachable magazine. Detachable floorplate.
Trigger . . . . . . .Double-stage, non-adjustable.
Safety . . . . . . . .Rotating finger hook safety locks striker.
Extractor . . . . . .One-piece spring steel hook mounted in bolt head.
Bolt-stop . . . . . .Pivotal type mounted in left receiver wall. Stops rearward travel of bolt and activates the ejector at the same time.
Ejector . . . . . . .Sliding ejector dovetailed into the bolt head.
Below the imperial seal are stamped the Japanese characters indicating the type and year designation of the rifle. These markings are illustrated nearby. The imperial seal is not found on Japanese training rifles, but a few are marked with Japanese characters to indicate they are for use with blank cartridges only. Sometimes there is another marking on the receiver ring of these training rifles, probably the mark of the arsenal which made them. The Type 99 (late version) rifle carries the imperial seal, but has no type or year markings.
On all 6.5 and 7.7 Japanese bolt-action rifles I’ve seen, the serial number is stamped on the left side of the receiver, below the groove for the sliding breech cover. I have no information on the serial numbering procedures followed in Japan, so the serial number in itself means little. The Type 38 action pictured in this chapter has a serial number well over 5,000,000, which may be some indication as to the number of these rifles produced.
One or more various small markings often precede or follow the serial number marking. These marks may be arsenal identification marks and/or arsenal proof marks. On Type 38 actions part of the serial number is usually stamped on the underside of the bolt handle base, and on some of the other parts as well, such as the trigger and trigger guard.
I will end this chapter with a description of perhaps the rarest and most unusual Japanese military rifle action of all.
I have never seen or examined a Japanese military rifle which, because of its hook-like safety, is usually called the Hook Safety Japanese rifle. I have seldom read anything about it either. Therefore I can write only about the action, an action which I obtained on loan from a kind reader, an action which originally had the bolt handle replaced. The most I have ever read about it is in the book Shots Fired In Anger in which the author, Bradford Aniger, describes this rifle he obtained while in the service in the South Pacific during WWII. He identifies it as the “Thirty Year” Japanese Carbine. It evidently was a forerunner of the Type 38.
Left side of the Japanese Hook Safety action.
The receiver of the Japanese Hook Safety action is of one-piece construction probably being machined from a forging. It is basically round except for a flat area around the magazine box and on both sides of the front guard screw stud. There is no recoil lug worth mentioning, although the stock may have been fitted with a separate steel lug into which the guard screw stud fitted. The receiver tang is several inches long, the loading port opening about 2
The inside of the receiver is machined to accept the two-piece bolt with its dual-opposed forward locking lugs, and this means that raceways are cut to allow passage of the locking lugs and shoulders machined inside the receiver ring for the lugs to engage with. Both locking lugs are solid. A separate
