The Japanese national police decided to replace their old Model 60 S&W revolvers in 1995. While traditionalist elements liked the use of a non-threatening compact revolver, others advocated for a modern sidearm – essentially a semiautomatic service pistol. Trials took place in 1995, and the SIG P230 in .32ACP was a compromise choice – semiautomatic, but compact.
The version of the P230 that SIG Germany submitted to these trials had a couple unique features. Namely a manual safety (to complement the decocker and empty-chamber carrying of the Japanese police) and a lanyard loop on the left side of the grip. However, the competition remained mired in controversy after SIG was awarded the contract, and only a few thousand were actually procured. In 2006, the J-frame scandium S&W Model 360 was adopted, returning the force to its preferred snubby revolvers.
A batch of apparently overrun P230JP pistols were imported into the US for commercial sale in 1997. Interestingly, these came in two serial number ranges. Guns in the 181xxx range are marked “Made in Germany”, and guns in the 163xxx range are marked “Made in West Germany”, although both have 1997 proof codes. This suggests that a supply of leftover parts from before German reunification were used to produce the Japanese police pistols.
I am shocked, shocked, shocked that the Japanese police bureaucrats didn’t also demand a grip safety and a magazine safety too. And block the magazine to hold just five cartridges!
Bureaucrats are a global menace.
According to http://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/double-action-revolvers/japan-double-action-revolvers/new-nambu-m60-eng/ mentioned Model 60 was designed over two years, between 1957 and 1959. so this seems like example of Japanese government slowness in replacing working solution, c.f. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/japanese-government-will-finally-stop-using-floppy-disks-and-cd-roms
In 1995, the Japanese government could have purchased similar.32 pistols for rock-bottom surplus prices. they were all over the place when government agencies worldwide switched to 9mm.
That idea presupposes common sense existing within the Japanese police procurement system. Which, from the evidence, does not appear to be “a thing”.
I’ve a friend who once had a small business going, catering to the Japanese citizens who wished to experience firearms. One of the more fascinating/surprising things about that business was just how many Japanese cops were clients, and what they’d want to do. There are some fairly “switched-on” Japanese police officers, but the sad fact is that they have to do a lot of their tactical training in Japan with airsoft, and if there were ever anything like a Mumbai attack, the odds of anyone putting up a credible resistance to the attackers is somewhere between “slim” and “not a chance in hell”.
From what he told me, he had a talk with one of his clients not that long after Mumbai, and the Japanese officer was emphatically clear on what he thought would happen if something like that went down in a Japanese city: It’d be about like a weasel in a henhouse, and it would probably take days for all the “proper channels” to unf*ck themselves to get JGSDF manpower or weapons out to deal with it. Supposedly, he’d done some checking into things where he worked, and the sad fact was that the local JGSDF base in his city didn’t even have the ammo co-located with the troops; it was all held under heavy security in a separate facility that could take hours to get to. He told my friend that he thought it would look a lot like the scenes at Isandlwana, with the quartermasters demanding proper paperwork.
I suspect that the Japanese cops might not do so well under such circumstances, and that their weapons-handling skills might not be of the first order.
It must be terrible to live in a country where no one is gunning each other down…
The problem is not the locals but the ease of outsiders with bad intentions showing up.
You pay the price in other ways.
In Japan, the social conformity required to make all of the supposed “non-violence” work is just as much a killer as anything in the US; it’s just that the killing isn’t as overt.
One way or another, the system gets its due. In Japan, the price is paid one way; in the US, another. You can also tell a lot from the fertility rates; while the US one is dropping, the Japanese started down the road of depopulation a hell of a lot earlier. The overall fact is that the fertility rate in a nation is pretty much a plebiscite on the quality of life there; if people won’t have kids, then… That should tell you a lot.
“Made in west germany” was 30ish years ago almost a trade mark, in practice presenting something of exceptional quality.