Notes: This is the first light machinegun the Japanese designed themselves, though it is obviously based on the Hotchkiss 1909. It was a rather unusual weapon, most certainly in its means of feed: the loader simply dropped 30 rounds of ammunition into a hopper on the left side of the receiver. The idea was that, since the Type 11 used the same ammunition as the service rifle of the time, any rifleman could provide rounds for the Type 11. The operating system was an extremely complicated one, and jammed up frequently. The rounds were also automatically oiled by the gun as they passed into the breech; the Type 11 has no primary extraction system and without the oiling, the spent casing would not come out of the gun without manual intervention. The Type 11 has no semiautomatic fire setting, but the rate of fire is low enough (500 rounds per minute) that single shots can be easily squeezed off.

Notes: This is basically an improved Type 11. The hopper feed mechanism was replaced by a box magazine feed; along with the hopper went the cartridge oiler too. The cartridges still needed to be oiled, but the loader was expected to do that while loading the magazines. This of course meant that the cartridges had plenty of time to accumulate a coating of dust and dirt while they were being carried around in combat, so stoppages were still common. The deletion of the oiling mechanism, however, meant there was more room for the barrel, so the length was increased. The Type 96 also had one extremely unusual feature: the normal sight was a low-power telescopic sight instead of a simple telescopic sight; unfortunately, vibration made this sight nearly useless during automatic fire, and it was normally discarded by troops. (The price below includes this sight.)