Model guns made in Japan (1)

 Marushin advertising its model guns

Model guns made in Japan

Japan has been using cheap alloy metal and plastic to make 1:1 scale model gun since the 1970s. To-day, still we can see some earlier period Japanese model guns being offered for re-sale in e-Bay by collectors in America. In the late 20^th century, due to its high quality in craftsmanship, Japan was one of the leaders in making 1:1 scale model gun: pistols, sub-machine guns and rifles. The Japanese brand names included Kokusai, CMC, MGC, Hudson and Marushin etc. 

Model guns made in Japan on sale at e-Bay

The model guns that I am talking about here are guns than cannot shoot out any projectile, different from air soft guns which can shoot out plastic pellets etc. The peak period for Japan in producing non-shooting model guns is probably from the 1980s to the 1990s. Yet with the arrival of air soft guns in large varieties in late 1990s produced by some Asian countries such as China, Korea and Taiwan on top of Japan, there was a change in taste among model-gun buyers: they preferred the air soft guns more.  A few non-shooting model guns manufactures in Japan were closed due to shrinking demands etc., for example MGC.

A model gun kit - MP40

A  model gun kit - Enfield revolver

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I had bought some of these ‘made in Japan’ model guns. I collected those guns that had been used by soldiers in major wars fought in the 20^th century. It gave me a sense of history.  I admired craftsmanship of these models. Within the limits of the controlling laws, Japanese manufactures tried to copy the real gun’s appearance and its internal mechanical parts as far as possible. I regarded these model guns as a piece of artwork in its own right as they were made with much care, even very minor details were copied from the real guns. For marketing reasons, there were two types of 1:1 scale model gun offered on the market, one was a fully assembled version. The other was the unassembled version, the model kit, which buyers had to put the parts together by following an instruction guide. The assembling process was both fun and challenging.

Manufacturers when designing a model had to struggle with two conflicting goals: to achieve the gun’s authentic look versed being true to the internal working mechanism of a real gun. There were several areas that the manufactures had focused on when making the models. The first one was to achieve an authentic looking in terms of color and size etc. About the appearance of model guns, some looked so real that it was used for display or decoration by collectors. The second one was that the gun could be assembled and disassembled like the original.  

 A model gun kit box showing a pistol  in cation

 One box of  'plug-fire cap'

The third one was on the functional aspects; the Japanese manufactures invented a ‘cap-firing system’: model guns could produce a shooting action. It was a challenging area for the manufactures as they had to invent a totally different firing system to achieve the effect that was similar to firing a real gun. Such a requirement was probably intended to prevent modifying the models to shoot real ammunition. Through this ‘cap-firing system’ a spent cartridge (a dummy shell) could be ejected smoothly in semi-automatic model guns and the next round being loaded into the firing chamber. If the model was a sub-machine gun or an automatic rifle, it should achieve a continuous burst, just like the real thing.

A ‘plug-fire cap’ was needed in this ‘cap-firing system’. The ‘plug-fire cap’ was a small plastic cap laced with a very small amount of gun-power.  Thanks to this cap, which was put inside a cartridge when use, the model gun could give out a firing sound together with gun smoke when the gun trigger was pulled. A cartridge could be reused many times. In some high-quality model guns, the ejection of dummy spent casings and the safety mechanism of the gun were working just like a real gun.

Parts seen in one gun model kit

Manufactures also paid attention on the weight of the model. As the model was mostly made of plastic, its much lighter than the real thing. To compensate for this, the Japanese model gun makers added metal powder into the plastic material to make it weight heavier. The manufacturers called this series of models the Heavy Weight (HW). Also, often manufacturers added metal pieces (usually hidden under the hand grip) to add weight to the models.

Parts of a semi-automatic pistol

In my next blog under the same hashtag, I shall introduce the Colt 0.45 semi-automatic pistol made by MGC, a famous Japanese model gun manufacturer in the 1980s.