Sword Production Statistics

[Nick Komiya]

Surely there must be people in the sword collecting community who read Japanese and can help you on that point. If it is interesting data to a wide audience in that community, it should not be difficult to get some self-help effort going. If an honest effort is being made and occasional tutoring is necessary to understand a thing or two, I'll be glad to help, but otherwise I do not do other people's homework. Of course you can put up those links in the Nihonto forum or whatever to ask around.

[Bruce Pennington]

From SteveM at Nihonto Message Board forum:

Nagoya
東造 Manufactured in Tokyo
本部 Headquarters
東一造 Manufactured in Tokyo #1
大造 Manufactured in Osaka
小造 Manufactured in Kokura

And from John "Shugyosha":

品目 Hinmoku Item
造兵刀 Army sword Production (not sure of this translation)
現代鍛錬刀 Gendai tanren gatana Modern training sword
九五式軍刀 Type 95 gunto
三五年式銃剣 1935 model rifle bayonet
九九式小銃 99 model short rifle
一00式機関短銃 100 model sub machine gun
八九式????筒 89 model grenade launcher
九九式??関銃 99 model light machine gun

The top of each row is the month, with a total at the end. Also, there are vertical totals in each weapon category.

We're still trying to figure out the meaning of the 2 sets of numbers in each place. Stegel noticed they look like percentages. If you divide the top number by 45, you get the bottom number to 3 decimal points. Don't know the significance of that, though.

[ghp95134]

From SteveM at Nihonto Message Board forum:

造兵刀 Army sword Production (not sure of this translation)
現代鍛錬刀 Gendai tanren gatana Modern training sword

造兵刀
Zōhei-tō.
Perhaps a contraction for 陸軍造兵廠刀 Rikugun Zōhei Shō Tō ????
Zōhei = arms manufacture/ordnance; Zōhei Shō = Arsenal.
I'd go with "Arsenal Sword"

現代鍛錬刀 Gendai tanren gatana Modern training sword

Tanren-tō [vice katana/gatana]
This should be rendered as "Modern FORGED sword." 鍛錬 Tanren (forge) also means "severe training" .... but here it literally means "to forge".

--Guy

[Nick Komiya]

Here are some more
Type 95 sword production from 1942 to 1945. Here the first row is number of units produced and the second row is value of production in 1000 Yen units. This sort of data is available for most weapon and ammo types.
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Type 95 swords under Nagoya arsenal supervision in 1944, Here the upper row is planned and the lower is actual
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There are tons of such production data in the archives.

This one shows that the Americans used these charts for assessing bombing raids
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Other people wanted to have English translations, too
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http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...D&IS_LGC_S32=&

http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...D&IS_LGC_S32=&

http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...D&IS_LGC_S32=&

http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...D&IS_LGC_S32=&

http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/imag...D&IS_LGC_S32=&

[Bruce Pennington]

Nick, this is fabulous! I'm excited to pour over these! Also, thank you for making clear the meaning of the ratios of the '44 and '45 charts. They are going to generate quite a few discussions! Looking forward to them!