Help with Mon

[MAP]

Beautiful Geoff!

[Nick Komiya]

Any effort to identify the hat owner's name based on the scant information you have is futile.

Firstly, as I always say, trying to associate post-Samurai era mons to family names is a waste of time, as from Meiji onwards, you more or less could choose what you wanted as a family mon. So the link to certain families got diluted to the extent of being almost meaningless. Thus many families with totally different names now share the same mon, while identical family names may have totally different mons.

However, with mon on real Samurai artifacts like swords or clothing, the situation is different, as they could only be worn by the Samurai class, which was only about 7% of the population. So if you find a sword from the Edo period with Mon, you have some chance of linking it to a certain family, because that narrowed down the field dramatically and Samurai mons were more jealously guarded. But all that got spoiled from Meiji onwards, when everyone could get a mon. So in other words, 93% of mons you find on WW2 items are not attached to any Samurai lineage associated with mons in fairytales, and even the legitimate 7% were plagiarized, so you cannot tell anymore whether there is a legitimate connection behind the mon. Only when you have both the mon and family name together can you verify whether that is a legitimate combination.

Secondly, there is no indication that the wearer was a diplomat, as the hat only says he was a middle rank Souninkan official in one of the many government ministries (excluding army, navy and foreign territories). Foreign office, justice, finance, education, commerce, postal etc, all ministry officials wore the same style dress uniform and the same style was in use from 1886 to 1945, so fishing one name out of that pool is a hopeless proposition.

Furthermore, in military terms, Souninkan encompassed ranks between lieutenant (Souninkan 6th class) and colonel (Souninkan 1st class), so that is more of a lake than a pool.

So better forget fishing and go swimming instead.

[Geoff Ward]

Thank you Nick!! as always I appreciate your help! Regardless of the end result I always enjoy swimming here!! Here is a really nice photo of this type uniform in wear.

[Nick Komiya]

Thank you Nick!! as always I appreciate your help! Regardless of the end result I always enjoy swimming here!!

So long as you watch out for the occasional undertow and hold onto your noodle float

[Geoff Ward]

G.

[Geoff Ward]

Here are a couple more period documents which depict this type uniform.

[Geoff Ward]

more