Showa 19.1 Type 14 Photos

This was about the third Type 14 I acquired and the first one that was actually in decent shape. It is a Nagoya Arsenal-Toriimatsu Factory piece dated 19.1, or January, 1944. It has the transitional finely knurled cocking knob, which was only produced for a month or so. Almost all the guns with it are dated either 19.1 or 19.2, although some 19.3s have it as they used up old parts that had migrated to the bottom of the parts bins. Earlier Toriimatsu guns had deep grooves in the knob, while later ones had coarser knurling. The Kokubunji factory of Chuo Kogyo, which was also producing Type 14s at this time, retained the grooved knob until it ended production in August, 1944 (Showa 19.8).

Here is the left side.

This is a close-up of the markings. The top row has the Nagoya Arsenal symbol at the far left. The symbol that looks like a circle with a square inside it next to that is a circle with the Japanese katakana symbol ro in it. This is a series designation. To keep serial numbers to five digits, when they got to 100,000 they would start a new series with a katakana symbol in a circle preceding the number. The first of these “extra” series had a katakana “i” in it (it looks like an upside down “y”). This symbol “ro” designates the second “extra” series”. The order comes from a traditional Japanese poem that starts “i-ro-ha”, which the Japanese use as equivalent to “a-b-c” when numbering things like points in a paragraph. Below the serial number is a second row with a symbol and the numbers 19.1. That is the date and month of the Showa era (Emperor Hirohito’s reign). The first symbol is Sho, short for Showa. The 19 designates 1944 and the 1 designates January.

Here is the safety lever. An awkward feature of the Type 14 is that you need to use a second hand to engage or disengage the safety. Note that there is always scoring of the metal and often of the top of the grip as well from the arc the safety makes when it is moved. Many people damage the safety trying to get it out. This is quite easy when you know how. Just swing it counter clockwise until it is in the 5 o’clock position and it will come out easily. Don’t force it!

Here you can see the rough machining that became typical of late war Japanese guns. To save time, less and less polishing was done.

Like all Nambu designs, there is no hold-open device, so the bolt locks back on the magazine follower when the gun is empty.

Here is the gun stripped.

This is a close-up of the magazine serial number, which matches the gun. The dot indicates this magazine was actually the spare issued with this gun.

Here are the grips.

This shows the inside of the grips. They are numbered to the gun with the last four digits of the gun’s serial number.

Click here to go back to the Type 14 Photo Gallery: t14gallery.htm

Click here to go back to the main page: jhg.htm

Last updated: January 14, 2007. All contents are copyright Teri unless otherwise specified and may not be used elsewhere in any form without prior permission.