How to date a Frog
No, this is not about dating a wannabe Prince, but about bayonet frogs.
I assume that the evolution of the Japanese bayonet is fairly well covered by other authors, though I can’t vouch for the accuracy of their work. However, when it comes to bayonet frogs, even Japanese books I’ve seen so far only say there were many variations in style and material, as if the IJA was totally confused as to what they wanted.
But the fact is that there was perfect rhyme and reason for those variations, and it is rather the authors that are badly confused. Anyway, what good does it do to have your precious bayonet dated precisely to the year, if you have it mated with a frog that can never be the right prince?
The only way to untangle the chaos created by earlier authors is to start from the origins and track their chronological evolution.
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