Sorry, it posted too fast.
They asked me to make an inquiry about the badge at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. I will write them today. Today only the ministry is able to get in the records of the deceased however for 99,99% no chance they will provide any details for the specific number on the badge.
It's a waste of time to write the ministry unless you can prove that you were a family member.
If you have the family name and the year of the ceremony, however, you can find the soldier in the government gazette.
The emperor and empress were the hosts.
You're probably right but it's not a problem to try and ask them.
Where can I find such government gazette? Is there any database online?
Besides, I like the comparison of the badge colour to the crowd control measure. Very creative.
By the way Nick, do you know the meaning of the colours used in order of the golden kite ribbon? I remember that you had a wonderful set of stories on the order but don't remember if you've mentioned that detail.
thanks for sharing with us.
Here are some more photos from the Yasukuni Enshrinement Ceremonies. See here for more info on the legendary Japanese singer-actress (Japan's cultural equivalent of Marlene Dietrich), also known in some Hollywood movies as Shirley Yamaguchi.
Regarding your question on the Golden Kite ribbon color, I too have never read the reason in print, but it was quite obviously the plan at that time to keep military ribbons all using blue-green and white to differentiate them from other civil orders and medals. At that time, all military medals were to be identical in design and ribbon color to the 1874 war medal, only to be identifiable through the campaign bars.
Oh yes, government gazettes listing all KIAs enshrined at Yasukuni are all digitally available at the Japanese National Library site (of course only in Japanese).
Very interesting photos, thanks a lot.
An interesting point about the colours of previous war medals. Haven't noticed the connection. So in making the manchuria incident medal they have run out of combinations of blue/green and white? Why they've chosen blue and green? Were they colours of the military?
Japanese medals and orders were launched to join European traditions, so ribbon colors and designs sought European recognition as bravery medals, etc rather than expressing any Japanese tradition.
Ogyu did exhaustive research on European awards, so he would have chosen colors similar to European equivalents. Blue-green is no military color in Japanese tradition.
Yes, I have one of those books too (mine is Oct 1941). The issue we are discussing, though, wasn't whether or not there were VIPs (there obviously were), but whether the ribbon color changed. Although I may be mistaken, there was a single ribbon for each ceremony. Of course, if I am wrong, it is easy to disprove by finding badges from the same ceremony with different ribbons.
One of the pictures Nick posted above was a long list of the KIA servicemen. In my volume, there were 100 pages of these names (along with ranks and home addresses), but there was no badge number assigned to them here. If there were, it would be easy to find the serviceman to whom the badge belonged. Well, it belonged to his family, not him.
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