MAUSER IN CHINA

  I went through several posts on GB about Japanese K98k contract, I'd like to provide some information from Japanese documents. I am not sure if somebody else has done similar job or not, hope I am not repeating. Japan ordered three contracts of Mauser rifles. The very first one ordered in 1938, Japanese reported 8000 "Original Mauser rifles" ( オリヂチル · ﾓｰｾﾞﾙ) were ordered in October 1938. In 1937/38 Mauser sold only 185443.69RM weapons to Japan and 31037.25RM weapons to Manchukuo.  This contract recently has been confirmed by Mr. Jon Speed's Mauser Archive research that 8000 Standard Modell were sold to Japan.  Be aware alongside Mauser rifle is Type I rifles bought by Ministry of Army and were not specifically for Imperial Navy though many of which were sent to Navy and Marine forces. (My writing about the history of Type I rifle:  History of Japanese Type I Rifle – Surplused ) Here's Japanese records of first contract. The second contract were ordered in early ...

 Some articles and books in English have already discussed the design of the rifle itself. This article is going to discuss the history of Japanese Type I rifle, which has not yet been realized by western collectors. Japanese named the rifle after Italy as “イ式小銃” or more formally as 伊太利製改造小銃 (Italy made modified rifle) which abbreviates to 伊式小銃. There’s a story circulating out there said these rifles were bought for Japanese Imperial Navy which land troops were hardly to acquire small arms from the Army controlled arsenals. I have to say this is not true though  IJ Navy and marines were main users of these rifles. Italian rifles alongside K98k from Mauser were parts of Trio Pact that Japan-German-Italian exchanges military technologies and weapons for balancing trade deficit. Japanese archives show that the rifle contract was processed by Japanese Ministry of Army under the term of Japanese-Manchuria-Italian Pact. Japan initially ordered about 130,000 Italian rifles (seems lat...