Most of these rifles were still in use during the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s and the Pacific War of the 1940s. During the war and subsequent American occupation of Japan, thousands of these rifles found their way to the United States as war souvenirs, making them one of the most common foreign military firearms available in the country. The Arisaka rifles are named for Colonel Nariaki Nariakira Arisaka, who headed a commission during the 1890s which was charged with developing a new rifle to replace the earlier models such as the Murata. The Arisaka rifles were designated with the year of the current emperor's reign. During the reign of Hirohito, rifles were designated by the last one or two digits of the adoption year according to the standard Japanese calendar.
Rifles captured in the field, however, normally have the chrysanthemum symbol intact.
The shiki character and the characters for the Japanese numerals are shown in the following table. A small number of Type 38 and Type 99 rifles had two concentric circles on the receiver in place of the chrysanthemum. Type 38 and Type 99 rifles that had the chrysanthemum completely or partially removed and replaced with the concentric circle marking. These rifles were serialized separately from regular production pieces. Each Japanese rifle was marked with the symbol of either the arsenal of manufacture or the arsenal that supervised the manufacturing subcontractor.