Plastic arms for prosthetic dreams

— Model guns and the men who kill nothing with them

Being the landlord, Hiroaki Takeda uses two unoccupied rooms in his apartment building to cache guns. One of the rooms is off-limits, he says, because it is dirty. In the other room weapons enough for a movie studio full of extras are stacked in boxes on shelves. Most are popular American brands: Winchester, Ruger, Smith & Wesson.

“To a degree model guns are a substitute for real guns,” says Takeda, 36, husband and father, “the embodiment of a dream.”
He picks up a U.S. Army Colt .45, metal body, silver finish. The barrel is plugged, some guts are missing. Then he describes how an amateur gunsmith could add a firing pin, a few other pieces, and have a capable weapon. The difference between real and fake is functionality.

A crowd of regulations have overwhelmed the no-gun law's monologue. The noise began in the 1970s when black and silver metal guns were forbidden, which means Takeda's Colt .45 is illegal. According to law, all metal guns must be white or gold. Plastic guns may be any color, even though they are mostly identical to metal guns.

Takeda says he is hardly concerned, because who can keep track? Over the last three decades technical minutiae have frothed into babble and shifted legality, as two years ago when the range of Takeda's Beretta laser sight (500 meters), which previously had been legal, exceeded the new reduced limit (50 meters).

Government changed the law because of youths who had shined lasers into the eyes of oncoming drivers. Other examples:
“Even though a steel [shotgun] chamber is illegal,” Takeda says, “a zinc-alloyed chamber is legal. Often the boundary of a law is vague.” He says individual parts, such as chambers, triggers and hammers, legally pass through customs.

The selectiveness of laws adds more convolution. The first machine gun of Hitler's Wehrmacht breaks no rule, Takeda says, supposedly because it is antiquated. The German MG-34 weighs
12 kg with a belt of dummy cartridges, also legal. A few modifications to the gun and it could fire 150 rounds in 10 seconds — more than most modern machine guns.

Of course, Takeda says, “It's about having, not using.”

He's in the minority, though.

“About 90% of gun enthusiasts prefer gas guns to models,” says Taro Ohnishi, 40, husband, father, and manager of LA Gun and Hobby shop. This means they buy toy guns that fire soft bullets
at a low velocity and pretend to kill each other at big playgrounds designed for wargames. At The Rock in Kyoto, for example, a full
day of faux carnage costs ¥3,680, ¥4,730 on weekends.

“Fake guns are okay with Japanese,” says Oonishi, holding a pistol equipped with a laser sight — this one within the legal range. “Most people have never seen a real gun, so fake guns have the same effect here that real guns might have in America.”

The huge plastic gas guns propped on the wall would look convincing if not for the setting. The showroom is too clean and lit like a supermarket; the guns might as well be vacuum cleaners. They cost between ¥25,000 and ¥60,000. Gear belts are sealed in plastic bags. Camouflage vests hang next to SWAT-style vests.

Cardboard targets in one corner are mildly pocked from countless plastic pellets. A look at Arms Magazine, which is displayed on top of a military ammo box, suggests that LA Gun's prices and selection are typical. On this month's cover a hotty is propping an M-16 on one shoulder as if she doesn't know her pants are unbuttoned.
Models (toys, not girls) have their own enclave in the store. The guns range from Deringers to assault rifles, ¥6,000 to ¥100,000;
the average price is around ¥20,000. But it's not only guns. Tamiaki Mure, 40, husband and father, is in charge of the Godzillas, '57 Chevys, etc. He says his collection of 300 action figures fills a showcase.

“Collecting model guns is the same as collecting trains or dolls,” Mure says. “The goal is to go deeper and find out more about the thing you love. You become an expert.”

Takeda agrees. He has been collecting longer than he hasn't been collecting, and his knowledge of firearms makes him a voluminous historian. His favorite is an 1873 Colt Peacemaker with a short barrel, hickory handle and florid detail etched into the frame. Besides models, he says he owns a few gas guns for target practice — to aid concentration. He says he would never need to use a real gun in Japan and is confident in his skill as a judoist.
However, he says, he does know people who sneak their firearms to Guam and Hawaii for target practice with live bullets.

“There are many ways to get guns past customs,” he says. “The vagueness of the laws makes it easy to bring parts like triggers and hammers into the country. Other parts are easy to make. Gradually, a determined person can collect the mechanisms for a real gun and legally bring it in and out of the country.” He adds that this is a good way to avoid paying more than ¥300,000 for a yakuza pistol.
As for bullets, he says, the black market price is around ¥10,000 for five bullets. The other option is much cheaper.

“A dummy bullet,” which is legal, he reiterates, “can be made into a live bullet. The missing ingredient is gunpowder. Only people with hunting licenses can buy gunpowder, but who is more likely to have
a hunter friend than a gun collector?”

Because shooting deaths are so rare in Japan, Takeda says —annually about one death for every 2 million people — it is big news when it happens and guns get a worse reputation than they have already. “But as far as I know, a gun collector in Japan has never shot anyone. Collectors have the most respect for guns. Therefore, they are most likely to use them safely.”
He slides a shell into his 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun, aims at a poster target, click, puff. The shell richochets with the ferocity of a
champagne cork and bobbles on the floor.

Text: Joseph Allen
Photos: Joseph Allen & Tomioka Yoshiyuki