Japanese Type 5 M1 Garand copy

I was in Collectors Firearms in houston the other day and they had a Japanese type 5 M1 garand copy prototype from ww2. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about these.

 

Here's a link to the Type 4 Japanese rifle at Wikipedia

Type 4 rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Here's a photo:

 

I dont understand why the JAPANESE copied the AMERICAN weapon: m1 garand they copy a lot of different weapons.

 

We don't do that here. It's not cute, funny or even mildly entertaining.

 

The Japanese developed w/ a number of weapons that were in the same league as the best of the rest of the world powers. IIRC the USN didn't have anything comparable to the Japanese Long Lance torpedo during WWII.
I wish there was some way of knowing a poster's age.

 

What? I dont know what exactly your talking about..sorry...

 

I for one think it is good that Japan makes some guns as we do not make as many as we used to and those guns are sometimes available in our markets. Down through time many guns by many countries have been copied. It is not unique to Japan to copy guns. Thank you for asking that our site remains a considerate place for all to visit.

 

With the exception of a few "radical" new rifles and other weapons, most are evolutionary (copies/improvements) designs based on earlier concepts. Even our (American) Springfield 1903 is, like many other rifles Mauser based.

The US government decided post Spanish-American war that the relatively new Krag rifles were slightly underpowered (.30 caliber/40 grains of smokeless powder) compared to the Mauser round, and lacked some vital features, such as clip-loading for speedy second reloads in the rifle itself. It originally had some good points, in that it was easier to load single rounds into, and there was a "speedloader" developed for it later. Those pluses didn’t save the Krag for US Army service. As such in 1900 the state-owned Springfield armory was ordered to design and build a new rifle, based on the battle-proven Mauser design.

Springfield (after getting threatened for patent infringement) finally entered into negotiations with the Mauser company and finally acquired the licensed rights for Mauser’s bolt action design, the loading clip, for the amount of USD $200,000 paid up front. I am unaware of any "per weapon" fee being paid to Mauser during the Springfield’s long production run.

 

If a weapon works good, why not copy it. If it works better than the weapon that the military currently has, which the M1 was way better than the type 99 or the type 38, why not improve. I know if I were the Japanese, I would've copied it.