Geth Reviews A Terrible Gun: Type 94 Nambu pistol

 Now, when reviewing this gun, I had to separate a lot of fact from fiction. One of its most notorious features has a lot of contention, with some claiming it was more deadly to the user than the intended target, and others claiming this is overblown nonsense. On the whole, however, this is a pretty disappointing gun for many other reasons.

Shown above is the Type 94 handgun (in the original Japanese,  Kyūyon-Shiki Kenjū). Now, many respected military historians such as the late Ian V. Hogg have given this gun bad reviews. More contemporary military weapons aficionados generally agree though Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons contends it wasn't great, but not as bad as it's believed to be.

The gun itself was designed by Kijirō Nambu, the Japanese version of John Moses Browning. The Type 94 was issued for service in 1934 (despite it being a commercial flop in non-military markets). Its designation comes from the Japanese historical tradition of their origins, meaning the gun was issued in the 2594 year of the Japanese system of dating. Oddly, it is not given a date based on the reign of the Japanese Emperor at the time. Earlier weapons designed by Nambu were considered quite good if expensive to manufacture, like the Type 14, a gun issued in the 14th year of the Taisho Era (aka 1926). So the Type 94 was made, based on Nambu (in cooperation with the Japanese military which he still sold weapons to even after his retirement) trying to make an easier-to-handle successor.

It's worth noting it took several years before the Japanese military accepted it for service, and even then it was primarily issued to paratroopers and tank crews, and could be purchased by officers on their own dime. According to The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II, it was particularly favored by tank crews for its small size, a premium given the cramped confines of tanks.

Now, when discussing the design, before I get to the hotly contested point that neither side can agree on as being horrible, let's cover some of the generally agreed bad design flaws.

• Like many weapons of its class, it used a rather low-powered 8x22mm pistol cartridge. It had about six rounds per magazine. Overall, this not exactly what most contemporary forces would consider ideal for military purposes in terms of power, and all other combatants in the war all had much better options available.
• The grips are very small, obviously to accommodate the hands of the average Japanese user at the time, meaning this gun will feel dinky in the hands of larger handed person, The grips are either bakelite/plastic in the early models or "slab" grips made of wood in the later models. Either way, the grips are slightly rough to the touch, made worse by the sharp taper from top to bottom, meaning a firm grip could make it jump out of your hands if not held in place at the right angles. The frame finish is also pretty rough, so simply picking this up is going to be a bit uncomfortable.
• The sights are marginal at the very best, terrible at worst. The rear sight is a super small V style notch and the front sight has a small upraised blade that doesn't work well for precision aiming.
• The safety is pretty miserable. It's a small pivot lever that was easy to break and considering its other flaws with the possibility of accidental discharge (more on that later), this is a pretty bad flaw that lends credibility to the fact the Japanese themselves likely never used this weapon all that often. In most pictures of people holding it, like tank officers, they come equipped with a sword at their side, as was the custom at the time, and likely got more use out of that.
• The magazine well was not overly reliable. Not only did it require considerable force to get the magazine to load in place, but the magazine safety was prone to unlatching if it caught a hard surface or even when pulled out of a holster at certain angles. Removing magazines could also be tricky, forcing the user to hold open the slide with one hand while forcing the magazine to eject with the other. Due to the fact the magazine catch sticks out, this makes it dangerous to use unless you check to make sure the magazine is secure before firing.
• The ejector port is actually not too bad, being based on Luger-esque straight-up ejection, though given the differing placement of the ejector and extraction mechanism, expelled cases could hit the user.
• Despite using a locking bolt mechanism, it's really a blowback-style pistol like the earlier Type 14, and while recoil is generally not too severe given the low caliber of the cartridge, the firing pin is a bit weak and prone to breakage.
• Maintenance and cleaning are very, very difficult. Not only does it have a lot of small parts that hands would have trouble with, putting it back together is not easy, with many internals prone to damage if handled improperly; not all that hard to to do given the poor internals to begin with.
• Quality control early on was mediocre at best, this gun got even worse and was made of incredibly shoddy materials late in the war due to Japan's lack of access to raw materials and worsening war situation. By the end of the war, some models were just useless on arrival.

Now, all the above make this far below most of the other pistol options available to the user of a sideearm during the second World War. However, the most controversial demerit is the infamous "gun goes off without the trigger being pulled" problem.

This has critics on both sides unable to agree. The main problem is that if the safety is off or broken, very slight manipulation of the trigger bar will cause a premature ejection. 

Now, there are varying opinions on this: 

• As mentioned, it had trigger bar prone to premature ejection. While American GIs likely were responsible for spreading the rumor the gun was designed that way on purpose as a suicide attack last resort, laziness in gun design may have also played a factor.
• The few accounts of this gun that are reliable establish it was of bad manufacture, poor at stopping a target, and generally considered a piece of crap according to the 1944 Handbook on the Japanese Armed Forces. 
• In my own attempts at cross-referencing, the accounts of the Type 94 being considered a suicide weapon are generally considered apocryphal. There are no confirmed reports it was either used as for killing oneself to avoid capture nor was its notoriously shoddy safety and sear bar purposely manipulated to allow a discharge without pulling the trigger as a last-ditch attack. Both are entirely plausible, but none of the accounts I read can agree if these events did happen with any certainty.

Overall, even if you discount the last item, this was a pretty underwhelming handgun with low stopping power, was hard to maintain and clean, had bad design flaws and poor materials even in the better early models, and overall was a poor weapon for military use. When compared to all the other handguns available to the other Axis Powers and the Allies, this gun, hands down, is my pick for worst sidearm of World War II.