LAST EDITED ON Nov-23-15 AT 02:56 PM (EST)
 
>This relative naming confused me for a while, since I was pretty sure
>that no Japanese emperor had reigned for 94 years, until some Googling
>revealed that 94 meant Japanese Imperial Year 2594 (i.e. 1934), on the
>crazy year-numbering system the Japanese were so fond of in the 1930s.
> I suppose this illustrates the cultural differences between 1920s
>Japan and 1930s Japan.

Japanese military hardware numbering was pretty inconsistent. Some items are numbered with the regnal year they were introduced (like the Type 14), others with the "imperial" year (there are quite a few WWII Japanese weapons that are called "Type 99", for instance, such as the Type 99 aerial cannon commonly used by Fusō witches in Strike Witches/Our Witches at War), mostly along the chronological lines you note. You see this in naval hardware, as well - most breechloading naval artillery pieces were guns of the "Third Year" type (referring to Taishō 3, 1914), where the front-line torpedo during the war was the Type 93.

Confusing the matter further, still other items are just numbered in sequence. Naval aircraft, in particular, got sequential numbers starting right around the time of the transition from biplanes to monoplanes, which is why the Zero is called the Zero. The first models of many naval aircraft were called "Type 0", including the Mitsubishi A6M ("Type Zero Naval Carrier Fighter"), and for some reason the A6M came to be known as the Zero by Western forces (where, for instance, the entirely unrelated Aichi E13A Type Zero Reconnaissance Seaplane didn't).

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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