Remember this? I did some research on it today.
Photos of the Hino-Komuro rifle currently circulating on the Internet look like they were taken in the 1990s or 2000s. The background of the photo looks like it’s in someone’s home, not warehouse or museum.
The rifle in photos looks pretty crude, and there are only two photos. No old black-and-white photos, which is very unusual for a 100+ year old rifle.
There is an obvious suspicious point in the photos.
As you can see, Japanese rifles at the time had slots to storage bayonet, otherwise shooter may injured or inconvenienced while carrying or using the weapon. But we can’t see this basic design the picture of Hino-Komuro rifle.
The thing puzzles me the most is that I can’t find any Japanese source of 日野式自動小銃. Almost all Japanese discussion is from recent 5 years.
There is a claim that the only source of the Hino-Komuro rifle is a German report and it only mentioned that Hino and Nambu presented the new rifle to the Emperor. Which is very likely a false report by the Germans. (This comment also lacks sources)
The most detailed information of this gun come from a Russian blog in 2018.
"歩騎銃"mentioned in this blog is super strange. People in Japan would not use this word to describe or classify japanese weapons. They only use “騎銃” or “歩兵銃”.
“歩騎銃” is only used to describe a type of Chinese weapon “步骑枪”, so this is a Chinese expression.
All his descriptions of the Hino-Komuro rifle (such as Hino-Komuro rifle able to hold 10 or 15 round) are unattributed.
Actually, this blogger is well-known in the Japanese weaponry circle for fabricating history. His blog is unreliable.
There are some handcraft enthusiasts in Japan who make models of rare or lost WW2 Japanese weapons. If the resolution of the photos is low enough, they can easily be mistaken for real.
I think that’s where those two pictures came from—a handcraft fake gun.
Since the Hino-Komuro 1908 pistol uses blow-forward mechanism, it’s pretty natural to assume this imaginary Hino-Komuro rifle uses the same mechanism. Even if the “rifle” mentioned in the German report was probably made by Kijirō Nambu.
My Conclusion:
1. Hino-Komuro M1904 appearance shown in the Dev and internet photos about this gun are fake.
2. Kumazo Hino himself probably didn’t even design and make such a rifle (same goes for the rifle blow-forward mechanism). But for now we still need more history archives/sources/evidence to prove it, whether to prove the existence or non existence of this rifle.
3. I’m afraid Enlisted may be about to get its first completely fictional weapon. Even worst than the infamous Type5 Ho-Ri, at least Ho-Ri actually has some blueprints.
Thanks to @Killerwolf1024 and @_DELAVR
Here are some important additions.
1. Now we can confirm that the Hino-Komuro rifle in the photos which circulating on the Internet is a handicraft of a Japanese weapon enthusiast.
2. There is considerable circumstantial evidence that Kumazo Hino made at least one automatic rifle during the Meiji period, but we don’t know any details about Hino rifle from that period yet.
3. The name “Hino-Komuro rifle M1904” is unreliable.
First, there is no evidence that Tomijiro Komuro (The person who funded Kumazo Hino to produce pistols in the 1900s) was involved in the production of this rifle.
Second, we have good reason to believe that Kumazo Hino invented more than one automatic rifle.
For the sake of rigor, we should only call it “Hino rifle”.
4. As an independent inventor, many of Hino’s works are not as well preserved as projects initiated by the military. Due to Hiro’s house being destroyed in the Bombing of Tokyo. Those weapons and files may have been lost forever.
For the automatic rifle we discussed above, we can only confirm that it was tested in the presence of the Emperor in 1904.
