JapanX

And the last question – how many of this 947892 Showa pieces are phantoms – never actually issued kites? I think that all kites before 1941 were issued. But how many from 831822 pacific Kites were issued (i.e. were given to the relatives of the killed soldiers)? I don’t have an answer. Not all – this is for sure. Otherwise we would not have this set of cups from 60s.

Now we’ll have another very interesting 1st class distribution by wars. Here it is.

Pacific War But how many Kites were awarded for Pacific War? Let’s subtract from total number of Showa awards kites that were awarded for Tsinan Incident, Manchurian Incident and China Incident. We obtain the number 831822 (831822 = 947892 – (70+9000+107000)). Using the same principle as before we can construct new distribution for every conflict inside Showa epoch. But all kites in every class will be practically alike (see type 3 in classification for 3rd class, type 7.1-7.3 in classification for 4th and 5th classes and type 7 in classification for 6th and 7th classes). The major differences will be in the documents.

Hey mate! What’s up with the 6th and 7th classes? The only thing I can say for sure is that we can rely on the following inequality. Number of 6th class Kites in given epoch ≤ Number of 5th class Kites in given epoch For some epochs maybe even < or even <<. NCOs …

Fifth class.

Fourth class.

Third class.

Second class.

First class.

Now distributions for every class by epochs. But at the begining - the complete picture.

So this is our approximated distribution for the Showa epoch.

So how big is our measurement error? No more than 10% no less than 5% (just trust me mates ). Is this error acceptable? Yes.

Now let’s take % of kites in 3, 4, 5 and 6-7 classes for Meiji epoch and (using the total number of Showa kites (which is 947892 = 1 067 492 – (Meiji total + Taisho total)) we will have our data for Showa epoch. Here it is.

And here is Showa numbers.

Take a good look at this two percentage distributions. Look how stable it is in the case of 3, 4, 5 and 6-7 classes. Of course Meiji epoch gives us much more representative distribution (because of the range) than Taisho epoch.

And here numbers for Taisho epoch.

Here we have numbers for Meiji.

But using distributions for Meiji and Taisho epochs we can easily get the missing numbers for 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6-7th classes. How? By simple extrapolation (I think Meiji distribution is quite representative!). For this let’s calculate percentage of kites in every class (against total number) in Meiji and Taisho epoch.

Showa The most difficult case is Showa distribution. All we have is numbers for 1st and 2nd classes. Here they are.

Taisho And another distribution for Taisho epoch.

Meiji Number of awards in every class (with the exception of 6th class) for Meiji epoch.

“… 1 067 492 awards in all grades were made…” (Peterson, p. 19) That’s a lot of Kites! But how this million distributed by classes and epochs? That`s an interesting question! The only additional information we have from Peterson is that “… the great majority of these were in two lowest grades” + total number of 1st and 2nd class. That’s it. In our following discussion we will use three sources of statistical information 1) Peterson book 2) Mr. Nakabori research + Japanese friend of Pieter (again many thanks!) 3) book Kunse (“Orders”) by Togashi Dzundzi which was published in Osaka by Hoikusya in 1972 (in turn information contained in this book I get from russian book Розанов Н.О. (2001) Япония: история в наградах. Москва: РОССПЭН//Rozanov, N.O. (2001) Japan: History in Awards. Moscow: ROSSPEN). Let’s start.

Here some of the marks you can find on Variations C and D. It is obvious that this two variations are blood related. :)

Hi doc! Thanks and hurray for Japanese Phaleristics! Nick P.S. May the force be with you :)

So the order itself doesn’t give us any useful information for its accurate attribution (the only thing for sure – it is after 1956 piece). All we have is the box. Is it early? Probably. Is it late? Probably. Is it legit? Probably. Is it handmade by recipient/collector/dealer? Probably. Is it made by the private workshop in some “edición limitada” fashion? Probably. Of course this box may be (or may not be) “late-after-war-circa1956-not-handmade-but-serial-made-piece”. I can live with that. :)