Show your Japanese cups

[DaveR]

This is the one that has me scratching my head, is that the minatagawa shrine symbol?



Great to see that the tradition is carried on with the current military.

[TAHD2000]

DaveR i cant help you with that one.
But i will bring back the cups to sealevel again after tomp's beuties with this one!

[tomp]

Interesting Transport cup, I don't think I have seen anything quite like it.

DaveR - it is the Kikusui design that Minatogawa Shrine did use, but it can be found on other things as well, like your regimental commemoration cup. Here is another example:

Antique Japanese Military 1932 Shanghai Incident Infantry Army Sake Cu – Imperial Military Sake Cups

Tom

[TAHD2000]

Most of us knows that there is a lot of cups out there with flags on. I can almost say there is litteraly millions of cups with flags and most collectors dont care about them unless they have some interesting connection to something.
But i thought that a couple of pics of different cups with flags on could be of interest fore those who havent seen so many of them.

[rra227]

Nice cups. Rich A. in Pa.

[rra227]

Here are my cups. Most of yours are nicer. Mine are chipped,worn,cracked,repaired. Rich A. in Pa.

[TAHD2000]

Great Rich, thats a nice little collection you have got.
But thats part of the charm of this hobby. Imagine all the times the old guys were sitting down having a cup of sake and talking about old times. To wear down the gold on the rims would have taken a lot of sips.

[tomp]

Here is a balloon unit cup that I recently added to the collection.

[Nick Komiya]

As gold rims were mentioned, it is probably also worth mentioning here that gold would have not been used on these cups from December 1937 onwards due to a prohibition issued by the Ministry of Finance. See here for details.

And it is correct that the gold on he rim would not have worn off easily. That is because the featureless "blank cups", including the gold rims were baked in the kilns of the primary producer at very high temperatures, which made the adhesion very durable. For these blanks, cups were rarely made in the same village as bottles, as villages specialized in one or the other. For instance, in Tajimi of Gifu Prefecture, where the vast majority of these souvenirs were made, the cup-making village and bottle-making village were located roughly 12 km apart. Furthermore, at this stage, these were only blanks with no pictures, unit inscriptions nor presenters' name in gold on the bottom.

Such customizing work was done by a third party called Shirushimonoya 印物屋, who added all the design work of the cherry blossoms, anchors, maps and what not, finally adding the name of the presenting soldier on the bottom and baked that final layer on at a much lower temperature than the original firing that formed the vessel. So these designs are markedly less durable and would wear off more easily. It was also at this shop that cups and bottles got paired as a set, etc.

For the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, most of this decoration work was done purely by hand, but since 1916 they started to use rubber stamps for most of the line-work to increase productivity.

Once this second baking was finished, the finished products were crated, and rail transported to the retail shops, where the soldier had placed his order sometime before his discharge.

Below, a modern example of how the rubber stamps looked for adding part of the design to the bottom of the cups just by placing the cup upside down upon the cup-shaped foam.

Existing cups are typically pre-WW2, as it became a huge burden for soldiers in WW2 to lavishly shower his neighbors with such souvenirs from his military service. So organizations like the Patriotic Women's League launched special campaigns to discourage soldiers and people from indulging in such gift-giving practices. Besides, by that time, there were far fewer survivors returning from the war, required to follow through with such social niceties.

Sake cups in red lacquer or silver, unlike the cheaper porcelain cups, were typically from the earlier wars, which were not given out by the returning soldiers, but rather given to the soldiers by the grateful municipality for those monumental victories. Such municipal gifts were also strongly discouraged during WW2.

[tomp]

Interesting information, Nick. Do you happen to know if Kutani kiln was highly regarded as a maker of sake cups during pre-WW2? You don't see many maker's marks on sake cups, but you do see the Kutani mark from time to time.


Tom