Thanks for that info on the small flag Nick!
Coincidently, I was watching a documentary last night on the Pacific campaigns and saw some footage of a couple of Australian soldiers holding what appeared to be a navy flag of the same size that I've posted above.
The narration suggested that this was from the campaign in New Guinea, which makes sense.
I recorded the programme so I was able to go back and take a couple of pics to post on this thread.
Thanks again.
Regards
Russ
Yes, those sizes existed as commercial flags that soldiers could buy just like the Yosegaki flags. My point was that they are not official military issue flags. As commercial flags, they were the most popular sized flags for signing, etc.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 01-06-2017 at 08:55 AM.
There are two flag types that regularly get mistaken as Army Regimental Banners. The more common of these are youth school flags that often sported the Rising Sun design. Those flags were designed by the schools, so designs varied.
The other one is the banner for the Hometown Veteran's Associations to which both Navy and Army vets belonged. These associations were set up by a national law and thus had legally defined specs. Shown below are the banner and member badge specs as defined in the regulation issued on 24th Sept. 1936. For the banner, only the name of the township that went into the white box at the bottom right corner differed.
Mum's the Word
I even put it in the primer section for the novice collectors, but people never seem to learn. Chrysanthemum pole tops were illegal during wartime, unless it was an item launched with the emperor's blessing as an edict. Therefore a mum pole top rules out any flag from being something like a legitimate wartime school flag and points to postwar fabrication.
Wartime school and other paramilitary flags normally used cherry blossoms, which were not legally restricted in use. So once again, a rising sun flag with a mum pole top means a postwar fabrication. Don't kid yourselves into thinking a flag for a postwar vet association could be a wartime flag.
I know a lot more about these postwar repro banners than I like to admit, because I had to carry one for a year!
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 09-15-2018 at 04:59 PM.
Instead of blowing $22,500 on an old fake, a new fake will be far more accurate and cheaper like the set below that sold a week ago for only $465. A dealer, who believes the NLF had such army-like fringed regimental flags just made himself the laughing stock of the world and has absolutely blown his credibility sky high.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 09-15-2018 at 10:29 PM.
Or $282 for a blank one without pole that sold last month, so you can have the emperor put in the regiment of your choice.
$22,500, yikes! But then I think about what an appropriate price would be for such a rare and historically significant item, if authentic, and wonder if such a price would be a steal?
Tom
I think selling a fake now worth only $300 at best for $22,500 is a tremendous steal. I had actually "red-flagged" the particular banner in 2008, after which the owner erased all the photos, but someone who had been observing all this back then gave me a heads up that it resurfaced.
Yes, if you could buy the one in Yasukuni for $22,500 it would be the steal of a collector's life, but the one on sale is one looker fake, even a fantasy piece.
Even a dummy should know by now that setting up a special regimental banner for the NLF (which of course never happened) entailed an update to the naval flag regulations (海軍旗章令) as well as an announcement in the government gazette (官報). Shown below are those two sets of documents that allowed the NLF from 1st December 1932 to fly the naval ensign, and nothing else.
A flag to be presented by the Emperor could only be established by an Imperial Edict, and Edicts were always on the very first page of the government gazette, so it's a no-brainer case, leaving absolutely no wriggle room for excuses, unless it was such a secret flag that not even the NLF were supposed to know about.
To be precise, the naval flag regulations were revised two more times before the end of WW2. The two dates were 20th July 1938 and 14th December 1940. Did any of those establish a new NLF banner? Of course not, case closed.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 09-16-2018 at 12:56 PM.
Here's a screw-ball for those who think you can tell by just looking at the mum top
Top secret, immediately burn after reading!
TOP SECRET, IMMEDIATELY BURN AFTER READING!
In doing some preliminary research for a film project that might come my way, I came across an interesting secret document dated 24th August 1945, regarding the Hoshou burning of regimental flags.
It is a command from the Minister of the Army addressed to the commanders of the 1st and 2nd General Army as well as the various Area Armies (5th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th ) that the 2nd article of a previous secret message regarding the “honorable dispatch 御処理” of regimental banners must be carried out by 31st August. In other words, it is saying all regimental flags were to be burned by that date to prevent capture by the enemy.
This 31st August 1945 was actually the initially planned official signing date for Japan’s surrender, but because of an approaching typhoon, the signing on the USS Missouri was delayed till 2nd September.
But the important point is that it further said “However, with regards to the 1st Imperial Guards Division, execution of this command shall be suspended until further notice. This document is to be incinerated upon reading”.
The commander of the 1st General Army obviously did not heed the “Mission Impossible” style instructions, as his copy landed in the archives, but the point I wanted to explain is why the 1st Imperial Guards Division was ordered not to burn their banner just yet, though Japan had already surrendered.
The reason for this stay of execution was that the Japanese Army was desperately trying to preserve the 1st Imperial Guards Division to protect the Emperor and was in negotiation with the US victors on this point. Downsizing would be unavoidable, but they absolutely felt the need for an armed presence to guard the Emperor from leftwing assassins and rightwing abductors, not to say anything about possible threats from members of the occupation forces.
Ever since the Takebashi Incident of 1878, there was in addition to the Imperial Guards, the Imperial Palace Police that served to protect the Emperor, but they would have been no match against anything like an armed uprising.
Though General MacArthur himself was concerned about the need to protect Hirohito from possible harm, he was adamant about completely disbanding the Japanese Army, and the preservation of the 1st Imperial Guards Division was officially rejected in November 1945. But in the meanwhile, on 10th September, a bolstered police presence (禁衛府) was introduced at the Imperial Palace by taking 4,000 men from the 15,000-man strong 1st Imperial Guards Division, and putting them under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Imperial Household instead of the Army.
Thus they did succeed in arming the palace police with the best weapons and men that the Imperial Guards could offer. Though they changed names, the 1st Imperial Guards Division did get preserved in this shrunken down form.
What happened to their flag? It was burned at dawn of 2nd September 1945, preceding the official signing of the surrender.
Most of the Japanese military high brass of that time swore that the preservation attempt of the 1st Imperial Guards was purely for the sake of protecting the Emperor, but Lt. General Seizou Arisue (有末清三), who had been negotiating this, with Major General Charles A. Willoughby of the American GHQ, later confessed in a memoir that it did cross his mind for a moment that the German Wehrmacht had seen a glorious comeback from the once meager, 100,000-man strong, Reichswehr of the Weimar period.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 09-18-2018 at 11:04 PM.
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