What’s the best made and accurate Japanese rifle?

[bob q]

My observations on firing Tpye-38 and 99 rifles for accuracy differ some from yours . I have fired over 250 T-99s and 80 T-38s for accuracy testing . I have run a military rifle match for about 18 years every weekend with 100's of different shooters and scoring their results . As issued Type-99's were one of just a few military rifles [ one other was the Enfield ] that just could not compete with all the others for bench rest accuracy . To get people to shoot them after a while we had to have special matches just limited to those rifles . Now Type 38 rifles and carbine did win matches with 1 to 1.5 inch 5-shot 100 yard groups on demand . The T-99's main problems were the large dia rear peep hole [ the accuracy did improve a lot if you made the hole smaller , but that was not a legal as issued rifle ] . The lack of good .311 + bullets , no good match type bullets and the bores being as large as .315+ . The chrome bores did not help either . The 6.5 did have many good bullets to pick from so you could find one your rifle really liked . I even won a match with a pair of sub 1.3 groups from a 1905 made T-38 with the .270 bore by using the Hornady .268 Carcano bullets. Finding a Type 38 with a good bore is harder , but worth it . The Type 97's did shoot groups half the size of all the Type 99 snipers tested . Now sub 1 inch compared to sub 2 inch is not the great a difference , but it is still 100% . One of my T-97's was the most accurate WWII military sniper I ever tested . With my 1000's and a friends 1000's of groups shot with many different loads , plus the 1000's of other targets from the other match shooters I feel that is a good sample .