Short Development History of Type 95 Gunto

[Kiipu]

Further on details of interest to collectors, I understood from Stu W's article that there were unknown markings. Production statistics information often help in clarifying such points, so I show you an excerpt of production capacity projections for March and September 1942. You will see a supplier called Mizuno, who is not included in Stu W's thread. They only produced for a few months in 1942 before getting sacked. They had a logo consisting of the character 水 in a hexagon.

Below is a link to Mizuno's [水野] company logo that Nick is referring to.
Has anyone come across this Stamp before??

Edit: In regards to the Mizuno logo, does anyone know what the outer circle is supposed to represent? It may be a clue as to what they made besides swords.

[Kiipu]

Is it possible that the mysterious fuchi stamp {一} could be for 東一造 (Tokyo First Arsenal) that you identified in the above two documents?

So your the one that started this speculation which has been repeated on other forums! Tōkyō 1st Army Arsenal 東京第一陸軍造兵廠 used an entirely different logo. The {一} logo your talking about is thought to be the logo of 合名会社神戸商店 [Kanbe or Kōbe]. This logo has only appeared on swords so far.
Help with "Ichi" stamp Contractor Name, Please

[ghp95134]

So your the one that started this speculation which has been repeated on other forums! Tōkyō 1st Army Arsenal 東京第一陸軍造兵廠 used an entirely different logo. The {一} logo your talking about is thought to be the logo of 合名会社神戸商店 [Kanbe or Kōbe]. This logo has only appeared on swords so far.
Help with "Ichi" stamp Contractor Name, Please

YEAH I’m the person who asked the question “is it possible?”

Sure wish that you had responded earlier with this bit of information.

[Bruce Pennington]

Here is an example of the Mizuno stamp

[Kiipu]

Edit: In regards to the Mizuno logo, does anyone know what the outer circle is supposed to represent? It may be a clue as to what they made besides swords.

While corresponding with another collector, the subject of what the Mizuno 水野 symbol depicted came up. Long story short, the fellow collector suggested a conveyor or tank track, and that is when I thought maybe the outer part of the symbol was a water wheel. I realize that this is all pretty far-fetched, but mizu 水 does mean water in Japanese and that does appear to be the character within the circle with protruding spokes. Put the two together, water plus wheel, and this is what I see!
水車 - Wikipedia

[Nick Komiya]

Here are two Type 95 documents I ran into today.

1. The first document is a status report from the people responsible for supplying replacement parts for weapons. The paragraph boxed in red says, "Please swiftly conduct maintenance (on-site repairs) of Type 95 sword Tsubas without further delay. For the Tsuba in brass, those held at the depot had been supplied and exchanged, involving a lot of effort. Those in possession of the units also need to be done immediately". It further states that only 40% of Type 95 field repair requests had so far been taken care of. This document is dated 5th Feb. 1944 and the significance is that its context presupposes the existence of non-brass Tsubas for the Type 95. This is the first paper I ever saw that even hinted at the existence of a steel Tsuba model for the Type 95. So this document proves those were in use prior to this date.

2. The other one is a May 1945 notice allocating serial number ranges to Jinsen and Osaka Arsenals.


PS: I just realized that the serial number allocation letter was already uploaded as post #83 earlier. However the December 1942 date quoted earlier was not correct. This May 1945 notice was meant as an update to the serial number allocations started in 1942. Thus these new serial numbers were only in use from May 1945 onwards. Sorry for being confusing.

[stegel]

Very interesting Nick!
This makes Osaka the 4th Arsenal involved with type95 production!
Would it be safe to assume the allocated range was 350001-400000??
Do you know if and when they started production??

[Nick Komiya]

Unfortunately Osaka is not shown to be involved in Type 95 production. In this chart Osaka was allocated serial numbers 1 to 30,000 of this 70mm prototype rocket launcher. Jinsen got serial numbers of 30,001 to 50,000 of the same launcher. Jinsen also was assigned production of the Type 89 heavy mortar (120,001 to 130,000). In this way, they made it impossible for the enemy to grasp total production numbers of each weapon (a launcher from Osaka arsenal may have serial number 3, while the same launcher made in Jinsen on the same day might have serial number 30,003).

[stegel]

Ok thanks for clearing that up, I just assumed the doc was only for type95 production.
So back to 3 Arsenal’s for the type95’s!

[Bruce Pennington]

Just wanted to post a couple of pics of two 95's I own with the initial styled wrap discussed by Ernie, Steve, and Nick (pages 3-5). One is Gifu (10506) and the other Tokyo (9811). I thought Steve had mentioned a serial number range these were found on, but I can't find it. But with the date range for this style posted by Nick, these fit in well. In the year it was used, there should have been over 12,000 of these made.