Anyone care for “Rinji Seishiki (Contingency Spec) Badges”?

[Nick Komiya]

How about “Rinji Seishiki (Contingency Spec) Badges”?

I personally would have called it the "80-Yen Special", true to its development objective, but it appears that many rather favor correcting the misnomer of “Type 3 Army Officer Sword” to “Rinji Seishiki Gunto”, so let me reinforce that choice of name by giving you another example of Rinji Seishiki (臨時制式), which got set up for the same reasons in end of 1941.

On 29th November 1941, the Army finally had to give up using the cupronickel (copper base with 10-30% nickel added) alloy for their coveted marksmanship and other proficiency badges as well as other chest badges like the commander’s badges. They simply couldn’t get that metal any more.

Previously, in early 1939, as the China Incident War Medal was being planned, it was already clear that they had to abstain from use of copper to give war munitions priority, but the Army still fought pressure to issue the China War medal in aluminum, as they felt it was too undignified as a material for a medal. That time they were saved by the great idea of making the medals out of bronze coins recovered from circulation by replacing them with aluminum coins.

If they already abhorred the idea of a war medal in aluminum, they would have been even more horrified by the idea of having to give out a soldier’s hard won and coveted, proficiency badge in aluminum. But that was what it came to 3 years later.

The government gazette of 29th November 1941, carried the announcement from the Minister of the Army, Hideki Tojo that henceforth production of all army badges will switch material to aluminum as a contingency specification exception. The gold color on NCO badges was to be applied through Almite anodizing. However, the army refused to completely compromise its sense of honor by insisting that the tiny army star that may be featured in some badge designs would be done in brass.

This compromise worded as a “Contingency Spec Exception 臨時特例仕様” meant that the true and official spec in cupronickel still stood , but had to be suspended until material was available again. Just like the “Rinji News” on Japanese TV, this decree was saying “We interrupt normal production to bring you these contingency specs”.

Naturally, this decision by the Army, big brother to the Navy, forced the Navy to change their badges too, as they were using copper for the Superior Class Badges and Silver for the Master Class. The navy’s Superior Class proficiency badges also got produced in aluminum from 1941.

Contingency specs were generally regarded with annoyance, but accepted in the spirit of “still having them was way better than not having anything at all”. They were nothing to honor with official sounding pet designations, as they were frankly only substandard embarrassments reminding them that they were failing their Emperor by not being able to produce what they should have been producing instead.

Hopefully you now understand that contingency specs after 1937 was a general widespread industrial phenomenon, and something as labor intensive as swords simply could not escape the same fate.

Unfortunately, those who only know swords do not know how to look up and see the big Tsunami that was towering over Japan back then.

[Alan M]

Brilliant , thanks Nick

[Nick Komiya]

Naturally all paid for with Rinji Money, What else?

I have been trying to show how the Rinji Seishiki Sword program of 1938, the civilian uniforms of 1940, the aluminum badges of 1941, 1938 launch of rubberized canvas leather substitutes, etc were all parts of a bigger Tsunami of Japan’s War Resources Management Program.

In this scheme of things, Militaria only represent the outer fringes of the wave, and limiting talk to such items can easily make you miss the forest for the trees, as did those who could not recognize the true meaning of the word “Rinji” in the planning document for the sword and went off in a totally wrong tangent to create the Type 3 myth.

What I’m saying is that the word “Rinji” used in the timeframe between 1938 and 1941, all automatically meant it was part of a national resource management program triggered by the China Incident to conserve material and human resources.

An easier to understand example, closer to the center of this wave was Japan’s Contingency Currency Program.

This was only like a blink of an eye in the case of the USA, where they introduced the Steel Lincoln Pennies for 1943, but for Japan it lasted half a century and came in steps, which served as a leading indicator of ripples that would hit military items a little later.

The China Incident caused alarm bells to ring first for copper and nickel, of which nickel was 100% imported. In order to secure these metals for military use, the government needed to hoard supply that was already in the country in the form of coins.

This is why, in June 1938, they passed a Law called the Rinji Currency Law (Contingency Currency Law). Of the measures launched, because of the China Incident, perhaps this legislation had the longest lasting grip on Japan, as it was only in 1988 that Japan abolished this law.

Currency was normally a matter requiring parliamentary voting, but the government needed the authority to flexibly recall coins from the market to match the pace of military production needs. This law was first issued as a time-limited law to end one year after the end of the China Incident. But then in February of 1942 the limit was extended to until one year after the end of the Greater East Asia War. This limit got further removed in 1946 and stayed in effect until April 1988.

The direct product of this law was called Rinji Auxiliary Currency, in simple terms, Rinji Coins. From this point on, only contingency coins were issued, and by 1943 virtually all pre-38 coins in circulation were replaced. Japan actually managed this coin supply in the market as a reservoir of war production metals and recalled them as necessary. Let's see how that was done in 4 phases.


1938 -1940 First Wave (From nickel to copper aluminum/zinc alloys)
Nickel coins were recovered and replaced with copper coins containing 5% aluminum (5 Sen, 10 Sen coins) or 10% Zinc (ie, brass) for the new 1 Sen coins. However, by the end of 1938, military demand for copper increased, so the 1 Sen coins became 100% aluminum.

This was actually when the China Incident War Medal was being planned. So it was unavoidable for the Army to get pressured to make the medal also in Aluminum. But to make a medal out of the same metal as the cheapest coin just launched in the market was understandably unacceptable to the Army.


1940-1943 Second Wave (Copper alloys switched to 100% Aluminum)
1 Sen to 10 Sen coins were now 100% Aluminum. The weight of the coins also got gradually reduced during this period, to conserve aluminum.

[Nick Komiya]

1944 Third Wave (Aluminum switched to Pewter)
As the war progressed, supply of aluminum for aircraft production became tighter, so they now actively recalled the aluminum coins and replaced them with Pewter coins. Pewter was actually too soft for use as coins, but Japanese occupied Malaysia offered a steady supply, so Japan was quick to adopt that material even for the Greater East Asia War Medal.



1945 Fourth Wave (Ceramic Coins)
Loss of the Sea Lanes finally started to choke off even the supply of pewter, so ceramic coins were developed and these were just being minted as Japan surrendered.


I am sure that by now everyone can see the towering Tsunami I mentioned earlier. Also, this sequence tells us that next to come after aluminum proficiency badges were those in pewter and the next grade down was supposed to be ceramic badges.

[Nick Komiya]

How the government had to gradually downgrade the material used for coins show very well the organised approach taken, but the magnitude of the initiatives are not necessarily conveyed. For this the following photos should help form some idea of scale.

The metal recovery law initiated in Sept. 1941 aimed to recover metal items from the population. It was gradually made to be more ambitious and the last revision in Feb. 1945 included aluminum objects to be collected.

Earlier in the program came such items as pots and pans which is one photo, and the many bells the Buddhist temples had to give up are shown in the other photo. Both are from 1942.

[Rescue190]

Very interesting reading. Over the top for a novice like me. I like the history. It is more extreme than our program of turning in you pantyhose to make war products. The US turned in many items of precious metals, steel, brass and such for the war program. The US only produced steel pennies since the copper was for the war. I am sure Germany also had such programs.
John

[Nick Komiya]

Pewter for coins and the Greater East Asia War Medal was all supplied by the Penang Pewter Refinery in Malaysia, the largest in the world at the time it was featured in the Japanese weekly pictorial below in July 1943. Before the Japanese took the area from the British, 50% of its production used to be shipped to the UK.

Loss of sea lane access to this source finally forced Japan to consider ceramic coins.

[Nick Komiya]

In prewar Japan, basically every elementary school had a bronze statue of a boy in their school yard. He was in kimono, reading a book while walking with a bundle of firewood strapped to his back. Though this practice ceased to comply with Japan's postwar attitudes towards education by the 1970s, still close to 50% of such schools have him (despite nowadays sometimes being seen as if encouraging kids to walk busy streets while immersed in their smartphones).

The boy's name was Sontoku (Kinjiro) Ninomiya, and the reason he was in
every school you can read here.

The point here, rather, was that as we saw above, by 1940, even Buddhist temples all had to give up their bronze gongs for the war effort, so the boy Kinjiro was also put on the endangered species list by then.

But as luck would have it, as the May 1940 article below reports, a company of Bizenyaki pottery in Okayama got the idea that, as Bizen-ware resembled closely the texture of bronze, it was an ideal Ersatz for bronze Kinjiros. And on top it it all, a Bizen-ware version would only cost a fraction of the bronze version. So as the article said, the company formed a huge unit of Kinjiros and sent them out all over Japan to replace the bronze statues.

Educators did not want children to think that they simply dumped Kinjiro for bullets , so many schools even put a red sash on their statues to hold a going-to-war send-off ceremony for Kinjiro and put up signs on the vacant pedestals saying "Kijiro off to war by draft".

Many commercial goods companies suffered terribly, because of loss of business in those days, but this was an exceptional success story for a change.

[ghp95134]

In prewar Japan, basically every elementary school had a bronze statue of a boy in their school yard. He was in kimono, reading a book while walking with a bundle of firewood strapped to his back. Though this practice ceased to comply with Japan's postwar attitudes towards education by the 1970s, still close to 50% of such schools have him (despite nowadays sometimes being seen as if encouraging kids to walk busy streets while immersed in their smartphones).

The boy's name was Sontoku (Kinjiro) Ninomiya, and the reason he was in every school you can read here.
<...>
Educators did not want children to think that they simply dumped Kinjiro for bullets , so many schools even put a red sash on their statues to hold a going-to-war send-off ceremony for Kinjiro and put up signs on the vacant pedestals saying "Kijiro off to war by draft"....

Thanks for that story, Nick. Yes, Ninomiya is everywhere ... at least in Kanagawa Prefecture. I often wondered who he was and now I know, as Paul Harvey used to say, ".... the REST of the story."

--Guy