Other Arisaka Type 30 forms were the Type 30 Training Rifle, for blank-firing exercises, and the "Manchu Arisaka" which were the same service rifles produced in China. A local, low-budget derivative of the Manchu was also known and this became the "North China Type 30" in carbine form - though chambered for the German 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge instead. The Type 35 Navy was nothing more than the Type 30 in Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) service.
Practical use revealed some inherent shortcomings of the rifle, however, namely in its chambering of the weak 6.5x50mm Arisaka cartridge which offered poorer man-stopping power when compared to European contemporaries. Reliability was also a factor in the disdain some generated for this long gun. This led to a more refined product in the Arisaka Type 38 (detailed elsewhere on this site) and the newer gun was adopted as soon as 1906 - though it still retained reliance on the Arisaka cartridge. However, the sheer availability of the Type 30 by the time of World War 1 (1914-1918) meant that both the Type 30 and Type 38 rifles were in circulation and service with frontline troops.
Use of the Type 30 was not limited to just Japan and China for several other powers of the period inquired and received the weapon in number. Some were captured by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in actions along the Eastern Front during the fighting of World War 1 and some saw conversion to the local 6.5x54mm Mannlicher cartridge. Over half a million were ordered by the desperate Russian Empire and the British ordered both the Type 30 and Type 38 rifle series to shore up their own stock until Lee-Enfields could be had in the numbers required (these then passed on to Russia from 1916 onwards). Estonia and Finland rounded out the list, the former modifying their stock to accept the British .303 rifle cartridge instead.
The Type 30's legacy was also not ended with the close of World War 1 in 1918 for the series went on to see extended combat actions in the Chinese Civil War (1927-1936), the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), World War 2 (1939-1945), the Indonesian National Revolution (1945-1949) and the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960).
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