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Help Good Luck Flag - Real or fake? Can anyone translate it?

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I'm looking for a translation of this Japanese good luck flag. I believe it is written in old kanji. It would also be appreciated if someone could tell me whether it is real or fake. Thank you
 

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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.
 
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Reddit was unable to give me a proper translation, and I'm sure there is someone out there who can translate it, so I don't want to give up. Here are more photos.
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.
 

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The slogan on the right is 至誠奉公 (righteousness/sincerity in public service - or other possible variations on that translation).

The left looks almost like a Chinese phrase or something. It doesn't look like any Japanese phrase I know of. The small writing on the far left is similarly unfamiliar to me. Usually you'd see the name of the presenter, and maybe the date presented, and the flag would be full of signatures. So I wonder why this flag doesn't have any signatures or dates? Is it really from one person to another? If so, I would expect to see one of their names on it: the name of either the giver or the receiver. This doesn't seem to have either.

Another thing; the words on this flag are all written by the same person, and they appear to me to be almost deliberately obscure. I mean, if I am sending you a flag that I hope you carry off to war, I wouldn't write on it using the most impenetrable cursive writing I can create. Do you know what I mean? I might write the patriotic slogan in a fancy, nearly illegible way to show off my calligraphy skills, but I wouldn't write every word on the flag in this kind of calligraphy unless I were a calligraphy teacher. So it kind of makes me slightly suspicious.

I see someone on Reddit has suggested the following
仰神明之須盡臣子之本分
久望中校 書
These look close to me, but I don't know the significance of any of these. They don't make sense to me. I mean, I know what the individual characters mean, but as a sentence they don't make sense. They don't follow rules of modern Japanese syntax, and if they are taken from an old, classical Japanese text the phrase would definitely show up in a search, since most of the Japanese and Chinese classics have already been digitized and put on the internet somewhere.

So the possibilities are:
1. An phrase from antiquity that is so obscure it is hard to find nowadays even with a search engine.
2. A phrase that the writer made up, and wrote in classical Japanese style (which itself is an approximation of Chinese style).
3. The translator on reddit got a few characters wrong, which is why we are having trouble finding it with a typical search.
4. Its a fake that someone just put random-ish characters on.
 
Thank you for that :) so all in all what I've gathered from everyone is that the flag likely reads something like "revere/honour the god(sun god Amaterasu)" "serve the country/public with sincerity", "do the duty of a subordinate", and then something likely a poem quoted by a Lt. General.

So the flag is likely a personal gift of good luck/motivation written by a skilled calligrapher who has given it to someone who is going into service. And also wants to show off their skill of calligraphy. Likely 1930s just before WW2.

If anyone disagrees or has any other possibilities let me know, or if you agree etc :)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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 era
 

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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.)
No, I'm just trying to pinpoint a likely time. If you know something I don't, feel free to say.
 
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.
 
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.
Thank you, that's very fair enough :) hopefully at some point I'll be able to get it checked out.
 
A photo of one similar to mine WW2 era
The flag in the picture is reversed. The soldiers wouldn't realize it, though.

The left column(the right side in your picture) is the recipient's name.
井澤敏美
Izawa Toshimi

There are two slogans and (probably) the presenter's name on the right side.
至誠一貫
尽忠報国
Consistent Sincerity
Give all for the country


代々木???
栗山力?
Yoyogi
Kuriyama


Yoyogi would refer to a location in Tokyo.

"do the duty of a subordinate"
臣子 more likely means "(Japanese) people" here rather than "subordinate". It connotes 天皇の臣子 in the context.
 
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