Info needed on Japanese Belt Buckle

[Kurt A.]

This was a flea market find from last weekend. Very high quality with polished highlites. Any info you can provide would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Kurt

[Kurt A.]

reverse

[ketoujin]

sword belt buckle

Kurt A.
From what I can tell your belt buckle looks like the one for the sword belt issued to civil officials in the Japanese colony known as Nan'yo or the South Seas. The South Seas colony was the name given to the islands Japan seized from Germnay in 1918 and ran as a League of Nations mandate up to 1941. After 1941 they were seen by the Japanese as any other colony. This pattern sword belt and buckle was first worn in 1919 after the establishment of a Japanese Government-General in the islands. Initially it was a Navy-run government and only Naval officers there wore swords until 1922 when it became civilian-run though the same belt buckle remained in use by the new administrators.

Thanks,
Gunnar

[Kurt A.]

Thanks for the info, Gunnar!

Kurt

[ketoujin]

colonial sword belt motif

Hi Kurt A,
No problem. All my reference books point to this being from the Nan'yo. Yet the Army's Imperial Guards Division had a very similar insignia that excluded the floral boundary which was worn as a cap badge - since I've never seen a Guards buckle (and I don't know if they didn't just wear the standard Army buckle) I couldn't testify as to what one looked like. By the 1930s at least most Naval insignia and swords usually had a five-petal cherry blossom while the Army used the ten-petal blossom. All my books confirm that the Nan'yo insignia - even though it represented a government founded and initially overseen by the Navy - used the ten-petal blossom the same as the later design specific to the Army. I can only assume that perhaps the ten-petal motif was used as insignia for this initially Naval administration because uniform and heraldric regulations were not completely codified and seperate cherry blossom designs given to each service until later.
Hope this helps.

Gunnar