Another thing concerning the training rifles being confused with last ditch rifles. The training rifles that could chamber and fire a round (not all could, leading to more confusion), were smoothbore. You will see multiple old accounts of last ditch arisakas being smooth bored, showing the confusion between the two and leading to the arisaka being called "junk rifles" I think the japanese training rounds for the ones that could fire were a very low pressure wood tipped one.
The Japanese clearly departed from the European model of having training rifles that fired smaller rounds such as the German KKW, Brit Enfield No2 MKIV, and the Mosin Nagant WZ-48. No way you could confuse those with a 8mm, 303, or 7.62x54R rifle if you picked one up.