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Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan

Article about: Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan Foreword As I had already finished writing a complete history of Japanese War Medals, I thought I might start something on the commemorative medal

  1. #11

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    The Imperial Constitution Promulgation Commemorative Medal



    Thus the medal was established 6 months after the promulgation, on 2nd August 1889 as Edict 103.

    Article 1 of the edict established two versions of the medal, one in gold and another in silver. Though the earlier proposal clearly said the gold versions were for the royal family, the official edict actually did not say who were to receive the gold ones.

    In the end, only 10 gold versions were issued and 7 went to Royal Princes (see ceremony layout) and the Emperor and Empress each got one, so there is only one I cannot immediately account for.

    Article 2 of the edict said the medal was only to be awarded to those involved in the Constitution Promulgation Ceremony up to and including Royal Princes, but excluding officials of Haninkan 判任官 rank and below.

    The reference to Princes and below made it sound like the Emperor and his wife could not get the medal, but both received them later as a matter of record. Officials involved in the ceremony had to be Shininkan 親任官, Chokuninkan 勅任官 or Souninkan 奏任官 rank to receive the medal. Though the edict also did not mention it, lieutenants and above that participated in the afternoon military review were also awarded the medal as per the proposal made in July.

    The ribbon is described as identical to the color pattern of the sash ribbon for the Order of the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, which was taken from the Prussian practice discussed earlier.

    The edict ends with a wear position instruction which says “To be worn on the left chest with ribbon. When worn with other medals or orders (4th class and below), it should be placed to the left of the order and to the right of other medals.” Later in the 1920s when clarification became necessary on the order of lining up multiple war and commemorative medals on a ribbon bar, in principle, the medals were to line up in the order of receiving from left to right of the ribbon bar (facing the ribbon bar), but the stipulation that the constitution medal was to be worn to the left of other medals (when facing the medal bar) meant that the constitution medal should come to the left of the 1874 War Medal as well, even though the war medal came earlier, thus it was a lone exception to the awarding date order rule.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  
    Last edited by Nick Komiya; 10-14-2017 at 10:20 AM.

  2. #12

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    Medal Design

    The design of the medal’s obverse side was a remarkably Japanese departure from European design practices in that it only featured the Japanese equivalent of a monarch’s throne, and has the image of the Collar of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum instituted on 4th January 1888, standing in for the Emperor. At that time, only the Emperor had this order, so it served as an Imperial symbol (Later, others would also be awarded this order of 22 karat gold, starting with Hirobumi Ito, the man behind the constitution).

    A European medal would have surely featured the monarch himself, and though the Decorations Bureau would have surely loved to do everything in the European style by featuring a likeness of the Emperor, Emperor Meiji established a tradition in which Japanese Emperors never got featured on its medals.

    One reason for this was the Japanese tradition of treating the Emperor as divinity, whom mortals were usually not allowed to meet face-to-face. Thus, audience with the Emperor even over matters of State used to be conducted with the Emperor sitting behind a reed screen called a Misu. That practice got combined with Emperor Meiji’s personal character of being exaggeratedly photo shy.

    The most up-to-date photo of Emperor Meiji at that time was one taken back in Oct. 1873 of him as a 20-year old. Thus by this time, it was getting to be an embarrassment to have to give those grossly outdated photos out at exchanges with foreign royals. So an Italian employee of the Japanese government was finally tasked to make a quick sketch of the Emperor, who however, still insisted on having the reed screen standing between them. This was finished into a portrait painting, but that portrait was only finished in August 1889, and the medal design had already been fixed as an Edict in the beginning of that month.

    The throne is called Takamikura 高御座 in Japanese and is used only on special occasions like enthronement ceremonies. It is not even at the Tokyo Imperial Palace, but remains in the ancient Kyoto Palace.

    The reverse side was straightforward with the characters in the center reading “The Constitution Promulgation Commemorative Medal of the Great Japanese Empire”, and the date of “11th February 22nd Year of Meiji (1889)” along the rim.


    This medal was the first in the war medal and commemorative medal series, which was set up with a hook and eyelet arrangement in the back to facilitate wearing on the chest.

    From the next 25th Wedding Anniversary Medal, female versions were already introduced within the edict, which came with bow-shaped ribbons, but originally there was no female version for the Constitution medal at the time of institution. (Examples existing with bow-style ribbons are likely to be later conversions, using aftermarket replacement ribbons which became available at a later date to replace soiled or damaged ribbons)

    Unlike the case for the 1874 War Medal, which was like an ill-fitting last minute afterthought, the case for the constitution medal introduced a lavish trend that will continue for all commemorative medals instituted by Emperor Meiji. It was in black lacquer with an Imperial Chrysanthemum crest on the lid and the medal lay upon a white inlay with a recessed outline of the medal, which held it nicely in place without rattling.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan   Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

    Last edited by Nick Komiya; 10-14-2017 at 07:19 PM.

  3. #13

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    Citations

    A week after the medal edict, on 9th August, letters went out from the Decorations Bureau, asking for the names of those qualified, who had participated in the promulgation ceremony or the military review.

    Finally on 21st November 1889, the Decorations Bureau reported to the Prime Minister that the medals were ready to be handed out. The Emperor and his wife were the first to receive their medals, which were delivered to them on 25th November.

    The citations were filled in and sent out in batches together with the medals. These citations predated the later practice of nominal award dates introduced from the Sino-Japanese War Medals. So the citations would have various dates on them, and the first batch for delivery to Cabinet Ministers also came with the date of 25th November 1889, as evidenced by the example with serial number “2”, awarded to Shigenobu Okuma, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time.

    Citation formats for orders and war medals already existed, but as this was the first commemorative medal for Japan, wording for the citations were proposed for Japanese citizens and foreigners on 24th September 1889 and 6th December respectively.

    Close to 70% of the citations would have dates from November 1889, and most of the rest from December, but there were still some that had to be carried over into early 1890.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan   Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

    Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan   Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

    Last edited by Nick Komiya; 10-14-2017 at 10:27 AM.

  4. #14

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    Numbers Issued


    A report issued by the Decorations Bureau in 1890 said the final award numbers of this medal came to a total of 2,207 for gold and silver together, which made it less than the 2,638 awarded of the 1874 War Medal.

    The 2,207 broke down as follows.

    Royal Family Members--------------------10 in Gold
    Government Bureaucrats----------------700 in Silver
    Military men----------------------------1,355 “
    Others (1-3 class order winners, etc)----28 “
    Chairmen of Prefectural Parliaments-----44 “
    Foreigners----------------------------------68 “
    Total ------------------------------------2,207

    The book on the 100 year history of the Japan Mint gives the actual production numbers as 18 medals in gold and 2,251 in silver. The difference from the lower numbers shown above, is likely to be extras retained by the government as samples that were not issued.

    That book also names the sculptor for the obverse side as Genjiro Egami (江上源二郎) and the reverse side as Ichitaro Egami (江上一太郎).
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  
    Last edited by Nick Komiya; 10-14-2017 at 08:01 PM.

  5. #15

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    A Hull Breach in the Constitution and Looming Doom


    The new nation inspired by the Prussian success became so successful that Prussia itself came to see Japan as a serious threat by the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the Kaiser himself initiated racist propaganda calling Japan the Yellow Peril.

    One problem that started to surface after the Russo-Japanese War, which indeed constituted a genuine peril, was a loophole in the constitution that would come to be called “Supreme Command Independence”. This would later set the army on an uncontrollable rampage, undermining the spirit of the constitution and leading Japan into a disastrous WW2.

    This was because Article 10 said, “The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and Navy.” The earlier explained clause, making ministers of State assist the Emperor and countersign made it sound like the Minister of the Army could have control over military operations, but actually his influence as a cabinet minister was limited to matters relating to governing the nation, like allocation of the budget to the army and he had no say in matters of military command.

    Instead the supreme command lying with the Emperor meant that he dealt directly with the Chief of General Staff, who took on the role of advising the Emperor, who naturally had no idea how to command the military. So the Emperor virtually became a puppet of the Chief of General Staff, who came to claim total independence of supreme command, which meant he felt no obligation to explain himself to the minister of the Army or to the Prime Minister.

    Hirobumi Ito, father of the constitution, caught this loophole already in 1907. He sought to amend the constitution to close that hole and subjugate the military to the cabinet, but before that could be achieved, he was assassinated by a Korean nationalist at Harbin Station in China in 1909. The Koreans still celebrate this assassination as an act of patriotic heroism, which remains one of the many touchy issues between Korea and Japan even today.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  
    Last edited by Nick Komiya; 10-14-2017 at 03:17 PM.

  6. #16

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    Japan’s one and only Royal Wedding Anniversary Medal


    The next commemorative medal to be established was the Commemorative Medal for the 25th Royal Wedding Anniversary Event 大婚二十五年祝典之章, announced on 5th March 1894 as Edict 23.

    Emperor Meiji had been married since 9th February 1869, so it was decided to celebrate the imperial couple’s 25th wedding anniversary on 9th March 1894 with a gala at the Imperial Palace followed by a military review like the day of the constitution's promulgation.

    The medal was to be given to those invited to participate in the celebration at the palace.

    The proposal to establish this medal was submitted to Hirobumi Ito, the Prime Minister from the Decorations Bureau on 1st March 1894, and was already waved through by the Legislation Bureau the next day, on the 2nd of March, finally to be issued as the Emperor’s Edict only 3 days later. So everything went smoothly as if prearranged. It must indeed have been prearranged well in advance, as the medal was to be given out already at the celebration event of the 9th, coming in only a week. Ito probably wanted to keep it a surprise for Emperor Meiji, only to ask for his signature at the last minute.

    The coming of this medal had been totally predictable and expected since July 1889, when the Decorations Bureau gave golden 50th and silver 25th wedding anniversary medals from Prussia as comparable precedents for introducing the constitution promulgation medal.

    In Japanese culture, wedding anniversaries had never been subjects for celebration by couples before, but if Prussia was doing it, Japan felt obliged to follow suit, as if that was supposed to prove to the world how westernized Japan had become.

    So the Imperial couple became the first husband and wife in Japanese history to celebrate their 25th Silver wedding anniversary. Emperor Taisho, Emperor Showa and Emperor Heisei, who followed, all celebrated their own wedding anniversaries as well, so it did take root in the end as a tradition in Japan.

    But the 1894 event for Emperor Meiji was the only wedding anniversary made into a commemorative medal and these medals were never issued for the other Emperors. Why? Did something go wrong?

    So rather than the reason for institution of the medal, the key question in this particular case is “Why did wedding anniversary medals fail to become a royal tradition in Japan?”.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

  7. #17

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    Leading up to the celebration

    In order answer this question, we need to look at how they actually celebrated this event in 1894.

    The government gazette, dated 13th February 1894, announced that foreigners in Tokyo, who had been awarded Japanese orders of 3rd class and above were to write down their address and awarded order class on the rear of their visiting cards and submit it to the government.

    The same edition of the gazette also requested that those without government posts, who possessed court ranks or orders should register their rank and order classes to the local government office along with name and address by 20th February.

    What was brewing was finally revealed, when the government announced on 20th February that 9th March would become a day off for all government employees to celebrate the royal couple’s 25th wedding anniversary. While compiling a list of those to invite from the government, they needed to grasp who needed to be invited from the general public, which was what the gazette request had been about.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

  8. #18

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    Celebrations

    9th of March, the day of the celebration, began with a Shinto ceremony at 9 AM, and from 11 AM, royal princes, bureaucrats of Shininkan rank and below, as well as aristocrats were allowed to stream in with their wives to congratulate the couple. And from 11:40 AM, foreign ambassadors, carrying messages from their heads of state or monarchs, came to convey their countries’ felicitations. This was further followed by a reception for the ambassadors, embassy staff and their wives.

    And in the afternoon, just like the day of the promulgation of the constitution, the imperial couple left the palace by horse carriage for another military review at the Aoyama Training Grounds at 13:30, which allowed the public a chance to give their congratulatory Banzai calls again.

    Festivities continued with a banquet with invited guests from 18:30. Those invited were princes with their princesses, bureaucrats and ambassadors. Roughly 500 guests were invited to this royal banquet, and approximately 100 of those guests, consisting of ambassadors and their wives from 13 countries, along with 57 of their embassy staff, were seated at the same table as Emperor Meiji and his wife.

    Dinner was followed by a performance of traditional Japanese dancing from 21:30.

    Thus the whole day ran pretty close to how festivities for the constitution promulgation ran 5 years ago. The difference was that this time they were more generous in inviting all aristocrats in Tokyo as well as government bureaucracy with all their wives without limiting the invitees only to senior ranks as they did before for the promulgation of the constitution.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  

  9. #19

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    The Silver Wedding Medal

    The Commemorative Medal for the 25th Royal Wedding Anniversary Event was given on that day to those attending the festivities, so the citations were all dated 9th March 1894.

    Once again, both silver and gold versions existed, but they did not borrow any ribbon designs from orders this time.

    The wear instructions in the edict, besides saying that the medal was to be worn on the left chest hung by the ribbon, added that the women’s version should hang from a ribbon tied in a bow, making it the first commemorative medal to have an official women’s version.

    The number of medals minted were, 33 in gold and 1,301 in silver, which is about 40% less than the numbers produced for the promulgation of the constitution.

    The design featured Japanese cranes, which had traditionally symbolized longevity and harmonious matrimony in Japan. That was because crane pairs remained mates for life and, along with turtles, were believed to have exceptionally long lives according to folklore.

    In the Edo period, cranes could even be seen in Tokyo and were actively protected. However, they suffered greatly from Japan’s modernization and the Meiji government neglected to extend the conservation policies, which quickly made them prey to hunting. The government reintroduced the ban on hunting cranes in 1892, but it was too late, and the bird was long feared to be extinct until a small flock of them were rediscovered in the Kushiro marshlands of Hokkaido in 1924.

    So ironically, the “bird of longevity” had actually already been written off as extinct, when they featured it on the medal to wish the emperor and empress a long and happy life together.

    The cranes were depicted as holding branches of pine in their beaks, which is another Japanese symbol for longevity. Surrounding the crane couple were sprigs of wisteria flowers, which are called “Fuji” in Japanese, which has the same pronunciation as “Defying death”, another reference to longevity. Atop it all was the prerequisite 16-petal imperial chrysanthemum crest.

    On the rear side, the small characters on the top said, 大婚二十五年 (25 years of a great marriage) and the large characters at the middle said 祝典之章 (medal for the celebration event), followed again by smaller characters which said, 大日本帝国 (Great Empire of Japan) and ending with the date reading 明治二十七年三月 (27th Year of Meiji, March).

    The wording above, actually indicate that the medal was no commemorative medal to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary itself, but was more a token of participation in the celebration event, as if it served as proof that wearers of the medal had official invitations and were to be allowed access to the event hall.

    This wording, jointly seen with the number of medals made, suggest that, unlike the constitution promulgation event, this time, military members taking part in the afternoon military review did not get the medal.

    Last time, because of the military review, medals issued to military members alone came to 1,355 constitution medals as we have seen, which already surpassed the total number minted of the wedding anniversary medal.

    The case was once again a chic, lacquered case with a silver chrysanthemum crest symbolizing the silver wedding anniversary and with vines of wisteria flowers adorning the rim of the lid. The cloth covered inlay was lined in red this time.

    The master mold for the medal was attributed to Takao Ikeda 池田隆雄, who would also do the obverse design for the Taisho Enthronement Medal later.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan   Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  


  10. #20

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    Why did wedding anniversary medals not take root as further tradition?

    The reason why no further wedding anniversaries were celebrated in the form of commemorative medals seems not to be any fault of the medal program of 1894, but rather due to the overwhelming success that other initiatives had in celebrating the 25th Wedding Anniversary in ways that touched the guests and the population more personally than with medals.

    One of those initiatives was Japan’s very first commemorative postage stamp, issued to celebrate the occasion. Two stamps were issued on the 9th of March, on the day of the celebration. One was a 2 Sen stamp, which served as postage for domestic mail, and the other was a 5 Sen stamp as postage for international mail. These two stamps became a phenomenal success with issue numbers of 14.8 million stamps for the 2 Sen stamp and 1 million for the 5 Sen stamp, which kept selling for a full two years from the anniversary date.

    These stamps were not actually even a government idea, but the result of a reader’s letter run in a newspaper, wishing the government would issue a commemorative stamp to celebrate the special occasion. The government responded to that wish on the spur of the moment by rushing to create printing plates for the stamps in just 5 days, instead of the one full month it usually took in those days. The issuing of these stamps was announced on 2nd March 1894.

    Because of this success, henceforth Imperial weddings and anniversaries were regularly featured as commemorative stamps like the May 1900 wedding of the later Emperor Taisho or his May 1925 silver wedding anniversary stamp series among many other imperial family themes.

    The nice thing about these stamps was that the occasion for the celebration was also described in English as “Imperial Wedding 25 Anniversary” and was a much more democratic way to celebrate the occasion than medals for the privileged few who got invited to the imperial celebrations.

    Starting with these two stamps, a new tradition was established of issuing commemorative stamps every few years, which has now grown to a few scores of special stamps issued every year to the joy of stamp collectors.
    Click to enlarge the picture Click to enlarge the picture Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan   Commemorative Medals of the Empire of Japan  


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