New Type 38 translation needed

[CaptSimon]

Greetings,

I recently picked up a type 38 at an auction recently. S/N is around 2004000 range, made at Koishikawa (Tokyo) with an intact mum. What drew me to it was the stock; one side has lettering painted on the butt stock, the other side has something carved into it near the magazine well. I'd like to know what it means.

Bernard

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[Patrick Chadwick]

The carving appears to be decoration. The painted symbols are so far off any katakana or kanji symbols that I wonder if they are even of Japanese origin.

[rcathey]

Hmm, strange. I tried Google Translate (which does not work well with handwriting). When I tried Japanese, Chinese, and Korean it translated to AACKAN. In all three.
So...well...this isn't any help but at least we can rule out one possible avenue of figuring this out.

[Patrick Chadwick]

I think that you might have got AACKAN in any language!

The attached picture shows how I suspect the Google algorithm interprets the markings. It seems to me that it just desperately attempts to puzzle them out as incomplete capital letters in Roman script.
Attachment 102096

[rcathey]

I think that you might have got AACKAN in any language!

Oh now that’s interesting! Thanks for that. Explains a lot of my Google translate failures haha.

[CaptSimon]

Thanks for the replies. I got to looking at it again and some other marked stocks and had an epiphany: what if its supposed to be read from top to bottom not left to right, when i shift it one symbol looks like the one for Type and another looks like the number 2. Any thoughts on the others?

[Patrick Chadwick]

Very good thought! I agree, the next to last symbol is the "type" symbol, so we now have

? ? Type 2

I'll have another look at the Kanjis, Kanas etc.

[beachdog77]

Sir, i mean no disrespect at all. What i say is simply an opinion. We all have elbows, other things, every body's has got one.
The carvings. while the gun is right side up, the carvings are upside down in the photo. The carvings are partly katakana, one of the phonetic alphabet. But this is odd because that alphabet is used to write non Japanese words in syllables Japanese people can pronounce. The last character is a kanji. This is suspect because Kanji is used traditionally, they dont tend to mix and match alphabets and wouldnt need katakana to write a word in their own language.
The first X looking symbol is "ME-H", its just a phonetic letter. The second one does not look like a katakana, hirigana or a kanji. The third carved character is a Kanji for "Big" or "large". The fact that is it upside down in relation to the rifle and in two different alphabets makes me cringe a little. Generally the Japanese did not allow them to deface their rifles, carving into the urushi finish defeats the point of having a water proof finish. Also the rifle was a gift from the emperor, the half god head honcho, you wouldnt do that. But then again some one may have. Also the stock had been worked on in the past and some of the finish sanded off, so some one has done some work.
The painted stuff is very odd. yes the later two characters mean "type 2" the two characters above it are suspect. I am not a native Japanese speaker, there might be some rare obscure character long forgotten by modern Japanese, but those are not kanji i have seen. i am leaning towards some one who does not speak Japanese carved some Japanese looking characters (and some real ones) in to the stock to give it a story or increase its value.
but like i said, its just my opinion.

---------- Post added at 01:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 AM ----------

Those of you that want to try and draw it or have any ideas, here is Jisho. you can draw the characters and it tries to guess them and puts them in the search bar. Hit enter and you get a translation.

Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary

[CaptSimon]

Sir, i mean no disrespect at all. What i say is simply an opinion. We all have elbows, other things, every body's has got one.
The carvings. while the gun is right side up, the carvings are upside down in the photo. The carvings are partly katakana, one of the phonetic alphabet. But this is odd because that alphabet is used to write non Japanese words in syllables Japanese people can pronounce. The last character is a kanji. This is suspect because Kanji is used traditionally, they dont tend to mix and match alphabets and wouldnt need katakana to write a word in their own language.
The first X looking symbol is "ME-H", its just a phonetic letter. The second one does not look like a katakana, hirigana or a kanji. The third carved character is a Kanji for "Big" or "large". The fact that is it upside down in relation to the rifle and in two different alphabets makes me cringe a little. Generally the Japanese did not allow them to deface their rifles, carving into the urushi finish defeats the point of having a water proof finish. Also the rifle was a gift from the emperor, the half god head honcho, you wouldnt do that. But then again some one may have. Also the stock had been worked on in the past and some of the finish sanded off, so some one has done some work.
The painted stuff is very odd. yes the later two characters mean "type 2" the two characters above it are suspect. I am not a native Japanese speaker, there might be some rare obscure character long forgotten by modern Japanese, but those are not kanji i have seen. i am leaning towards some one who does not speak Japanese carved some Japanese looking characters (and some real ones) in to the stock to give it a story or increase its value.
but like i said, its just my opinion.

I don't think the stocks been sanded, at least not recently. It has shrunk and i'm still getting a fine layer of dirt and grime off of it. I picked this up at the J.M. Davis auction, and its been sitting in a vault since at least the late 60's, early 70's. I just wanna make sure its not significant before I shoot it (or to make sure its not Japanese for don't use.)