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Hello Ronan - I saw this on reddit, and I think the guys on reddit gave you as good of a translation as you'll likely get. I don't know if its real. Its certainly different from most others that we see. I feel that since its not the quintessential "good luck flag", in other words, a flag with signatures of people wishing a conscript good luck in battle, its probably not as collectible as a more typical yosegaki.
I see nothing on that flag that suggests to revere Amaterasu, so I wouldn't get too deep into those weeds. The second character 神 is literally "god/gods" so perhaps it is a poetic allusion to the gods of Japanese mythology, but that's as far as I would go.
The four-character maxim on the right is a very typical slogan to find on these flags. The most common one is "Everlasting luck in battle" (武運長久) which appears on roughly 98% of these flags.
Nothing on there suggests 1930s any more than 1920s or 1940s or later. Since the flag doesn't mention going off to war, and doesn't mention a date or a battalion name, it could be a present for someone being appointed head of the Board of Education of a town sometime in the 1950s.
A photo of one similar to mine WW2 eraI see nothing on that flag that suggests to revere Amaterasu, so I wouldn't get too deep into those weeds. The second character 神 is literally "god/gods" so perhaps it is a poetic allusion to the gods of Japanese mythology, but that's as far as I would go.
The four-character maxim on the right is a very typical slogan to find on these flags. The most common one is "Everlasting luck in battle" (武運長久) which appears on roughly 98% of these flags.
Nothing on there suggests 1930s any more than 1920s or 1940s or later. Since the flag doesn't mention going off to war, and doesn't mention a date or a battalion name, it could be a present for someone being appointed head of the Board of Education of a town sometime in the 1950s.
So if it looks similar to your eyes, it must be real, and also the dated from when you want it to be?A photo of one similar to mine WW2 era
No, I'm just trying to pinpoint a likely time. If you know something I don't, feel free to say.So if it looks similar to your eyes, it must be real, and also the dated from when you want it to be?
(At least yours isn't backwards.)
Thank you, that's very fair enough hopefully at some point I'll be able to get it checked out.Hi Ronan, I'm not trying to argue that your flag is from the 1950s. I'm just saying we have no info (yet) to place a date on it. People post yosegaki on here almost daily, and maybe 60% of them are obvious fakes. Of the remaining 40%, I'd say maybe a third of those have the hallmarks of a pretty decent yosegaki; addressee, addresser, location, date, signatures of various people who signed the flag before it was presented, etc.
This means a good portion of the flags get thrown into the "not clearly fake, yet not convincingly authentic" pile.
After the war you had some very hungry and desperate ex-Imperial Japanese Army guys who discovered that they could sell wartime souvenirs to American GIs for cash, and so a lot of flags ended up in GI hands this way. When they ran out of authentic flags, they discovered they could fabricate WW2 souvenirs, and the Americans couldn't tell the difference. Nowadays the fakes come from China, where the cost to produce these is, say, a dollar or so.
Which means one ends up looking at these things with a very critical eye. The one in the picture you attached in your post #8 has the recipient's name on it (not to mention it comes with a vintage photograph), so already it has one of the hallmarks of a genuine flag, even if we ignore the WW2 army guys holding it up. I can't read all of it, but it looks like two patriotic slogans to the right side, then the writer's (presenter's) name under that. So there is no need to doubt the flag in the picture.
Your flag has a patriotic slogan, then several lines of unidentifiable text. Hopefully there is a clue in that text that will help educate us as to whether or not it is authentic or a fake. Right now, its too difficult to read so it seems premature to nail down a date for this.
The flag in the picture is reversed. The soldiers wouldn't realize it, though.A photo of one similar to mine WW2 era
臣子 more likely means "(Japanese) people" here rather than "subordinate". It connotes 天皇の臣子 in the context."do the duty of a subordinate"