Imperial Japanese Equipment

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The Empire of Japan: the first East Asian country to successfully industrialize in the late 19th century and from the 1930s to 45 the scourge of the Pacific. While better off than Italy, Japan still lagged behind in a lot of fields and had major raw materials and fuel shortages.

Small Arms

Japan's small arms were generally less advanced than that of other countries at the time; while most countries still relied on bolt-action rifles as their service weapon, many countries still produced decent quantities of SMGs as well as self-loading rifles in more limited numbers. Japan however focused primarily on bolt-action rifles, with fewer automatic weapons to back them up. Weapon quality also suffered later in the war as well.

Rifles and SMGs

• Type 30 Arisaka: Japan's old rifle, put into service in 1899. Fired a 6.5x50mm bullet. Generally a solid five-shot bolt action for it's day, if a bit underpowered. The choice was deliberate, as Japanese people of the time were noticeably smaller than the peoples of other industrialized empires.
  • As a side note, the 6.5x50mm Arisaka bullet was better suited for a man-portable automatic weapon than the typical over-charged full rifle rounds of the late 19th/early 20th century, which were made with accuracy and stopping power in mind. The Russian Fedorov Avtomat used them.
• Type 38 Arisaka: Update on the Type-30. Used primarily in WWI, and partially replaced by the Type 99 in WWII.
• Type 99 Arisaka: Built to replace the Type 30 and Type 38 by firing a 7.7x58mm cartridge. Improvements to the sights also made it the preferred rifle for snipers. That said, the Japanese still had a lot of Type 38s and 6.5x50mm, so it never fully replaced the Type 38.
• Type 100 Nambu: The only production SMG made by the Japanese, and made in more limited numbers compared to other militaries. The Nambu SMG fired the same 8x22mm cartridge as the standard Nambu pistol. It had sideloading magazine much like the earlier MP18; while side-loading magazines had fallen out of favor by this time due to the unbalanced weight, it was a hell of lot better than the other experimental Nambu SMGs that had been made at the time.
• Last Ditch Guns: In the late war, Japanese manufacturing had been effectively crippled and resources were in short supply, so these so-called "Last Ditch Rifles" were made to arm what military forces remained, as well as civilians for the upcoming invasion of the Japanese home islands. These ranged from simplified versions of the Type 99 to very crude single-shot musket-things to give to civies.

Pistols

• Type 26 Revolver: A simple break-action hammerless revolver, chambered in 9mm Japanese revolver. Was invented back in 1893 but was still used in WWII to supplement weapon stockpiles.
• Nambu Type 14: The standard sidearm of the IJA following WWI, replacing the Type 26. Chambered in 8x22mm, it wasn't as strong as contemporary pistols, but was solidly built, and later became the inspiration for the Ruger .22 pistol. General IJA policy at the time was that officers were allowed to buy sidearms with their own money. A common misconception is that the Type 14 was dangerous to shoot, which is only half true. It won't explode, but it will sometimes go off when clearing a jam(more on that below). Another is that the Nambu was a cheaper knockoff of the Luger, which is untrue. The Type 14 is a series of improvements of an earlier weapon commonly called "Grandpa Nambu", a firearm which appeared in production at roughly a similar time to the Luger. While not objectively terrible, it was nothing compared to the Italian Berreta or Browning's 1911. It frequently jammed as well due to the springs not being able to keep up with the bolt, and was compounded by the bullets being angled up. The magazine release is also difficult to clear without adjusting your grip. However to the weapon's credit it had a very light trigger pull and had a trigger guard designed to allow troops wearing gloves to use them without removing said gloves.
• Nambu Type 94: A smaller, lighter-weight pistol compared to the Type 14. It was called the "Surrender Pistol" because it had an exposed sear, meaning that pressing down on the sear could fire the gun without pulling the trigger, so supposedly a Japanese soldier could fake surrendering so that they could shoot their captors up close. While this may have happened on occasion, stories of surrendering troops regularly firing using the sear are probably unsubstantiated, as it takes a considerable amount of force to squeeze the sear hard enough to fire the pistol. The Type 94 was used primarily by officers, army airmen, tankers, and paratroopers due to the lighter weight. Largely it was an army weapon, though there are reports of the Type 94 being used by Navy officers who purchased them with their own money.

Machine Guns

• Type 11 Light Machine gun: Put into service in 1922, this gun is weird. Basic idea, make a machine gun that could use the 5 round stripper clips used by Arisaka Rifles. That means you don't have to make special magazines for it or ship them to the front, while regular infantry dudes can supply it with bullets. So it has this weird hopper magazine that takes up to 6 clips. This also meant putting the stock off to the side. While it worked, it was heavy, awkward and not terribly reliable.
• Type 99 Light Machine Gun: A more conventional LMG, modeled after the British Bren gun, and chambered in the same 7.7x58mm ammo as the Type 99 Arisaka. Other than that, its one of the few LMGs with a bayonet mount.

Anti-Tank Infantry Weapons

• Type 4 70 mm AT rocket launcher: Introduced in 1944 as an answer to the American Bazooka. Fairly basic but still a reusable item, a rocket was slotted into the front and set up by a simple percussion lock. A few thousand of these were made before the war ended and they saw only limited use. Never the less the PLA copied them for their first generation of RPGs.
• Lunge Mine: Somehow the Japanese figured out a way to banzai charge tanks of all things. Little more than a shape charge attached to a pole, the idea was that a soldier would wait in ambush for an enemy tank to get close enough; the attacker would then charge at the tank’s side armor and strike it with the lunge mine to set it off; of course, at that range the explosion would more than likely kill or maim the user, if they weren’t already killed from trying to charge a friggin tank.
• Type 97 Automatic Cannon: The Japanese version of the AT-rifle concept. Hilarious because they considered it a cannon and less of an AT-Rifle. Shot 20mm ammo. So did the Finnish AT-rifles, but it is more hilarious because Japan also built Yamato(more on that below). What was unique is that they ended up getting used on some Japanese aircraft as a form of cannon. Overall not a terrible weapon, but quickly became outdated and was abandoned after 1200 total units due to the sheer complexity, but it certainly puts a massive dent in the "Japan just built shitty stuff" myth.

Misc

• Type 89 and Type 10 Grenade dischargers, aka "Knee Mortars": A nifty little Japanese design, these are basically miniature man-portable mortars. Lightweight (around 5 kg) and nominally requiring only a single soldier to use , they were capable of chucking a hand grenade up to 200 meters away, which came in pretty handy in the often close and cramped firefights in the jungle. As an amusing sidenote, the name 'Knee Mortar' comes from a mistranslation of a Japanese manual on how to use the thing: American soldiers first believed they were supposed to be braced against one's leg due to the curved butt-plate (which in reality is to make it easier to rest against tree roots or rough ground). While the error was quickly discovered (it was obvious from the recoil that bracing it on your leg would break your femur at best), the name stuck.
• Guntō: Bargain Basement knock-off katanas. It was a regulation that all IJA officers were required to carry a sword and to that end a large number of these swords were made. Since Japan was raising a fuck-huge army under the militarists, they dispensed with the old arts of Sword Production and instead produced lots of blades not up to snuff. For this reason, in Japan they're not considered swords and they can be confiscated by the government for recycling. A lot of the surviving ones were trophies collected by US Army soldiers and Marines.
• Bayonets: The IJA stuck bayonets on everything. Not just rifles, but also their LMGs and SMGs. Bayonet charge had fallen out of favor with everyone else, and bayonets were only a last ditch weapon for everyone else, but bayonet fighting was still a mainstay of the IJA and had some success on the Chinese front. Against the Americans, however, who possessed significantly more automatic weapons, it had been rendered a useless tactic.

Vehicles

Tanks

The Tank Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Army was not that great. See, our dear friends had experimented with the tank concept pretty early on, but much like the rest of the world took the wrong lessons from Spain. They also failed to integrate the weapons into divisions properly. The skirmishes with the Soviet Union and visits to Germany in the late 30s pretty much proved that the concept worked different than they thought, and they tried to catch up. However, tanks take a lot of money, labour and equipment to produce and a lot of fuel to operate. In China, 1930s era tanks were still quite effective and if war happened with the United States the fleet and air force obvious took priority. So most of the "good" tanks ended up in the homeland because of the logistics strain, and the far cheaper Type 95 Ha-go/Kyugo were far more common by virtue of being lighter and thus less of a bother to send to shitty undeveloped island #273.

Imperial Japanese Tanks were given a designation based on the Imperial Japanese Calendar, which starts counting at 660 BCE.

• Type 95 Ha-go/Kyugo: Named Ha-go after the manufacturer but called the Kyugo by troops, either name is correct, but Ha-go is more familiar to western audiences. Since Japan like most powers considered the idea of the Infantry and Cruiser tank concepts, the 95 was considered as an alternative to the land battleship concept. The 95 could keep up speed and were vastly faster, making them better than contemporary infantry tanks. They ever were cheaper to make, and were cushioned against heat and bumps...by asbestos. In Burma, one was captured and is still at Bovington, and a contemporary report indicated that there were design elements that were quite good, especially the bogie wheel suspension. However, the 37mm cannon became rapidly outdated, and the machine guns were only ok, being fed by hoppers and not belts, and the commander was cramped and somewhat overwhelmed. Perhaps worst of all was that crews were strongly frowned upon for adding on armor or boxes for ammo, though logs to allow troops to sit on the back were considered acceptable. The turret could also could be jammed with a knife, and there are allegations that American .30-06 ammo was able to penetrate the side armor, though these reports are not fully substantiated.
• Type 97 Chi-Ha: The main medium tank of the IJA during WWII. It weighed 14.3 tonnes, a 127kW engine, armor 8-26mm thick and was armed with a 57 mm main gun and a couple of machine guns. When it was introduced in 1936 the Chi-Ha was pretty good and it was often effective in china. When the US came around, not so much.
  • Type 97 ShinHōtō Chi-Ha: A Chi-Ha with more armor and a higher velocity 47mm gun better for anti-tank work introduced in 1942.
• Type 1 Chi-He: Another upgrade on the Chi-Ha with some more armor and a better engine. About 170 were made and they stayed on the Home Islands.
• Type 3 Chi-Nu: Another upgrade on the Chi-Ha, with up to 50mm of armor and a 75mm anti-tank gun. It was designed to take out Shermans in 1943 and put into production in 1944 when Japan was getting a serious ass whoopin by US Bombers. The most advance Japanese Tank to see even limited mass production. Stayed in the Home Islands.
• Type 4 Chi-To: Not an update on the Chi-Ha, but an entirely new vehicle from the ground up. A couple of Prototype vehicles which were broadly speaking in the T-34/Sherman's ballpark. The Cheeto's legacy is mostly preserved by World of Tanks and Alternate History nerds.
• Type 5 Chi-Ri: A single prototype that, had it been completed would have been more heavily armored than a sherman with a new powerful 75mm gun, plus a 37mm secondary cannon.

Ships

Of all the Axis powers, the Empire of Japan had the strongest navy. Germany had to rebuild its fleet effectively from scratch over six years and Italy...was Italy. Japan in contrast kept its fleet from WWI and upgraded and expanded it fairly well in the 1920s and 30s, though they eventually became outclassed by the Americans and British who could just smother Japan with production. That being said, The Japanese Navy was extremely effective in the early war, and it was only after Midway where they lost half their carrier fleet in an ambush that the Navy faced serious losses.Good luck trying to look up a Japanese ship name without being bombarded by pictures of anime girls though.

Aircraft Carriers

Japan entered the war with the most experienced sea aviation force in the world, with a total of 8 carriers constructed before 1940. They had quickly gone through the same lessons America and Britain did, that larger carriers are better and that superimposed decks are a bad idea. However, they failed to anticipate losses and waited too long to initiate a buildup of new carriers.

• Akagi
• Sōryū

Battleships

• Yamato class: The single largest series of battleships ever built at 263 meters, and the wet dream of any naval enthusiast, weeaboo, and big gun fan everywhere. But before we get excited, we need to make it clear that no, the Yamato was objectively the wrong ship in the wrong war. The age of the battleship, with rare exception for shore bombardment, was pretty much over. Worse of all Japan was somewhat aware of this, with foremost officers like Yamamoto outright saying Naval airpower is the future, and was proven largely correct as the only engagement Yamato or Musashi(Shinano was another ship of the line that was converted partway through construction) ever participated in where they actually got to fire their weapons at anyone turned out to be Leyte gulf in 1944, and both were sunk by angry American dive and torpedo bombers by 1945.
  • With that boring disclaimer out of the way, let's get to the meat and potatoes. The thing had nine 480mm cannons and was housed in a turret that weighed as much as a small destroyer. On top of that, each turret could fire AA shells that would explode after a time fuse delay, and the few test photographs we have show they were a sight to behold, though US pilots reported not being too afraid of them, and they tended to damage the barrels. The class had an incredible number of medium and light weapons that could be brought to bear against lighter targets and fighters as well, with as many as 100 of these lighter weapons, though the 25mm autocannons were reportedly some of the worst in the war. There were some additional 13mm machine guns thrown on the bridge for good measure, but this was more like a desperate afterthought than a concerted effort to add additional AA protection. Still, a Yamato could still cause a small Titan or knight to sweat a little, because those main armaments are utterly insane.
  • Yamato had absolutely insane 410-650mm armor in some places, making her an armored behemoth. However, it is important to remember that Japanese steel historically sucks. The torpedo defense system was hoped to protect the ships, but was often troublesome and thus never really as effective as hoped. A prime example of this is when an American submarine hit Yamato and forced her to return to port for repairs, and the outright sinking of the Shinano by the USS Archerfish, a Yamato modified to be a "carrier support vessel".
  • However all this really doesn't matter, because the Americans threw out the Iowa-class in 1943 and they were objectively the best battleships ever built. While the guns were smaller and far less armored, they were faster, technologically more advanced with radar systems to help gun tracking and targeting, and built with far better quality steel and AA guns. While one could be autistic and debate the dozens of variables about which one would cause the other to succeed, the reality is you can't just compare the two in a vacuum in a ship on ship engagement. But given that the Iowas tended to have better speed and range, at a strategic level you could argue that the Iowas win purely on those factors because oceans tend to be big so range is kinda important. There's also the fact that there were twice as many Iowas as there were Yamatos, so any comparison should be taking this into account.

• Nagato class:

• Kongo class:

Cruisers

The cruisers of the IJN were heavily influenced by the Battle of Port Arthur, with a preference for torpedo armed cruisers. Even within the IJN this policy was not without its detractors due to the risks of torpedo tactics. In practice, these torpedoes rarely contributed and were a frequent liability, with several cruisers being taken out of action due to their torpedoes being hit. Otherwise, Japan's cruiser force was generally well built but lacked modern fire control.

Destroyers

Japanese destroyer construction after the Washington Naval Treaty emphasized fleet destroyers as a way to bulk out their navy while appearing to conform to the treaty. A series of classes were developed in the 20's and 30's but all were produced in small batches of no more than a couple dozen each. The IJN never settled on a common design for mass production like the USN did with the Fletcher.

Airplanes

Contrary to American propaganda, poorly made history documentaries, or just outright misunderstanding Japanese air doctrine, Japanese aviation was pretty much some of the finest on earth at the time. See, when your empire is built upon island chains, naval and air supremacy kinda become very important. As a result Japanese aircraft, while very poorly armored (especially by American standards) and not quite as heavily armed compared to the allies, were nevertheless actually very well built, just in a very different way

Fighters

• Mitsubishi A5M "Claude":
• Mitsubishi A6M "Zero": The Zero was the iconic aircraft of the war for Japan and served in every theatre, though it was first and foremost a Navy Fighter. It was designed so that a well trained pilot could fully utilize the aircraft and outmatch most anything in the world at the time. It was even good enough that the basic airframe (made from high-end alumuminum alloys and with revolutionary structures such as smoothed rivets) could be recycled for carrier use with minor modifications. This did have the downside of sometimes removing radios for increased range or due to them just not working, and by late war America and Britain started topping them with better armored and easier to fly designs. However, bear in mind that the Zero could achieve ranges of 1,870 km and was still able to accept upgrades until the end of the war, a feat not shared by every fighter.

Bombers

• Nakajima B5N "Kate"
• Mitsubishi G4M "Betty"

Wunderwaffen

Much like the Germans, the Japanese were trying to get their own nuclear weapons program going, though they didn’t make very much progress with it. In fact, when the Americans dropped their own atom bombs, the Japanese initially refused to believe they were real due to the sheer amount of resources needed to refine Uranium. The Japanese also had domestic copies of the Me-163 and Me-262 fighters as well, but lacked the means to put them into production to be able to affect the outcome of the war.

All that said, they also had some unique domestic programs:

• MXY-7 Ohka: the infamous kamikaze airplane, as in being purposely built for the task. An Okha was basically an anti-ship missile... except is was piloted by a live human being instead of automated systems. A woodene airframe encompassing a rocket engine, a basic cockpit an a 1.200kg bomb, it could (and did) ruin the day of any ship it hit. It was mostly used during the battle for Okinawa (with some success), but they were extremely short-ranged (37km) and had to be dropped by Betty bombers... who were more often than not intercepted before they could launch the suicide plane. In typical Japanese irony, 'Okha' means 'cherry blossom petal', petal that can only fall down once it becomes separated from its tree... Yeah... Pretty poetic, if you can somehow accept the fact there's a goddamn human being committing suicide to crash a 1.200kg bomb on target.
• Fu-Go Balloon Bombs: Very basic in concept, these were weather balloons carrying firebombs and very rudimentary timer that would release the bomb after a set period. Sent from Japan, they’d travel the jet stream to America and drop small bombs or cause fires. Completely incapable of any targeting, a few civilians were killed and American authorities clamped down on reports to prevent panic amongst the civilian population. Ultimately, these were the first truly intercontinental weapons ever made, but at most 300 of 9,000 total balloons were confirmed to have completed the journey to the USA. A total waste of time and resources, basically, but they did succeed in forcing the Americans to waste a tiny amount of resources to trying to track them and combat potential forest fires.
• Atomic Bomb Projects: There were several projects for uranium enrichment. The Japanese had some good nuclear scientists, but ultimately the familiar limitations of limited industry and resources kept them from success. The Nagasaki group dropped a letter from Luis Alvarez to Ryokichi Sagane in the hope he could explain to the government what they were now facing, although the army didn't give it to him until after the war had ended.