Nick Komiya once told me an interesting story about manufacturers of orders during Meiji/Taisho period of time.
Almost all orders made between 1874 and 1929 were contracted by three family workshops
Haruyuki Hirata Sousuke Namikawa Muneyasu Oki
Under them were the many subcontractors.
Back in the 1916 there was some sort of a scandal involving these three masters that even got into the newspapers. A total of 9600 Rising suns and Scared Treasures were contracted to these 3 workshops in connection with the war with Germany. The Namikawa workshop was the first to deliver and the quality of the product exemplified a high level of workmanship that attested to their passion to always improve. The Oki and Hirata workshops, however, put in a level of performance that would have been quite "acceptable at the time of minting the Russo Japanese War Medal", but nothing that raised the bar in the way Namikawa did. Thus a great number of pieces delivered by the latter two workshops were ordered to be redone to the huge embarrassment of both masters.
I wonder if the piece we examined (and pieces alike) could be from this batch of “unacceptable orders” or manufactured by this two workshops before their quality become “unacceptable”
Regards,
Nick