Resurrecting Hirohito’s Regalia
I am writing this in response to Stegel’s urging. To my surprise, I learned from him that the tassel employed on Hirohito’s Gunto is regarded as a bit of a mystery even among sword enthusiasts. I had assumed that such a high profile item would have been covered by every sword book, as it was even once front page news in the government gazette back in 1934.
I wrote before that army uniforms got established either by an Edict straight from the Emperor or by Army Ordinance issued by the Minister of the Army. However, when launching a new army or navy uniform design for the Emperor, the legal form it took was neither of the two, but in the form of Imperial Family Regulations ( 皇室令 Koushitu Rei ).
Hirohito’s new Type 94 gunto design was announced in the very front page of the 15th February (Thursday) 1934 issue of the government gazette. The front page, featuring Imperial Family Regulations 3, gave detailed descriptions, which was followed by 2 pages of illustrations. In the later pages of the same gazette, the normal army officer’s Type 94 sword was described and illustrated as part of Imperial Edict 26.
I will simply quote verbatim from this gazette what it says about the Emperor’s sword and tassel and compare the illustrations against depictions of the regular army officer versions. The following illustrations from the gazette should be self-explanatory. They will enlarge for easy reading if you click on them.
Based on this information and some black & white photos that exist, a Japanese artisan has faithfully reproduced the sword tassel unique to the Emperor of Japan. Just from the description, one cannot tell how the 3 strands of golden thread are woven into the silk tape in a fashion different from the version for army generals, but surviving photos clearly show the gold lines crisscrossing, just like in the reproduced example. The army officer tassels were all described as having exactly 84 strands to the bushy end of the tassel’s tail, but no numbers are mentioned in connection with the Emperor’s version.
If you had not read this thread before, please also read posts #11, #18 and #19, which also discussed the Emperor’s swords.
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