IfI had to guess, Japanese Imperial Marines Flag??

[Nick Komiya]

In that case, stay away from the first flag. If one is going for a fake, one should buy a textbook Tojo flag that has good pedigree as a contemporary fake. The second one, though totally uninteresting for me due to its civilian theme, being a colorful piece probably has some exotic charm to offer to American or European collectors. To answer, Chen's ? after item 5, it means "Home Front Service". Home Front in Japanese is literally written "behind the gun".

[TP Alexander]

Nick ,
In regards to the first flag, you know how it goes. Sometimes, when you go into someone's home, it's "Buy it all, or don't buy nothing!". This is one of those situations.
Besides, it's still a good 'meatball' flag, right??!?
I really do appreciate the help.
Tim

[Papa Nambu]

Besides, it's still a good 'meatball' flag, right??!?

It may be a period flag, but since you have experience collecting German stuff, let me compare it to the following:
Say you find a real German flag, but someone had taken a marker and wrote "Heil Hitler" "SS" and some other junk on there. Would you still want it because the flag itself was original? You'd probably just consider it ruined if the writing was modern. If it had been added by a GI back in '45 to "enhance" it, then maybe it would have a little value as "trench art", but you'd still wish the guy had left it alone.

[TP Alexander]

It may be a period flag, but since you have experience collecting German stuff, let me compare it to the following:
Say you find a real German flag, but someone had taken a marker and wrote "Heil Hitler" "SS" and some other junk on there. Would you still want it because the flag itself was original? You'd probably just consider it ruined if the writing was modern. If it had been added by a GI back in '45 to "enhance" it, then maybe it would have a little value as "trench art", but you'd still wish the guy had left it alone.

Touche, mon ami.
Merci,
Timmy

[chen]

In that case, stay away from the first flag. If one is going for a fake, one should buy a textbook Tojo flag that has good pedigree as a contemporary fake. The second one, though totally uninteresting for me due to its civilian theme, being a colorful piece probably has some exotic charm to offer to American or European collectors. To answer, Chen's ? after item 5, it means "Home Front Service". Home Front in Japanese is literally written "behind the gun".

Papa is right that sometime the meaning of a Kanji or combination of Kanji in Chinese is different from Japanese. Komiya provides the meaning for item 5. Now if translate word by word from Chinese point of view, the meaning is:
1.gun
2.back, behind
3.obey
4.public
However, from Japanese point of view, 1.+ 2. means Home Front and 3.+4. means Service.