A Stitch in Time

Description: 

Silk plain weave Japanese flag; a red circle printed on a white ground.  Silver-toned gilt paper triangle supports with holes for cording, machine stitched on the upper and lower left corners to support rayon cording for hanging.  The top and bottom are selvage edges of the fabric and the right and left side are hemmed with a straight machine stitch.  The front and back are the same with the exception that the hem is folded towards the back, which is common practice in determining the front and back of a Japanese flag.[1]  The sun was either screen or block printed onto the silk ground as evidence by the red and white colors appearing on single yarns.[2] 

The flag is silk, the thread is cotton, the corner supports are silver-toned gilt paper, and the cording is cuprammonium rayon.  The ground is a balanced plain weave with flat bundles of 12 silk fibers with no twist.  The thread count is 43 threads/cm in the warp direction and 36 threads/cm in the weft direction.  The fiber contents were determined using an Olympus BMax BX60 Polarized Light Microscope; the weave was examined with a Herburgg Wild M3Z Type S Stereo Microscope.  See Appendix I for images.

Provenance:

The owner is a collector of World War II memorabilia and this is an item he acquired many years ago from Japan.  According to the owner, the flag was hung by two thumbtacks on the wall of an auto shop for about 35 years. 

Art Historical Context: 

The national flag of Japan is a white ground with a red circle representing the sun in the center and is called Hinomaru (circle of the sun) or Nisshōki (sun-mark flag) in the Japanese language.  The sun is an important figure in Japanese mythology and the Emperor of Japan is said to be a direct descendant of the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu which bestows on him the divine right to rule.  The first recorded use of the sun motif flag was in the court of Emperor Monmu in 701CE.

In 1870 Proclamation No. 57 which specified the flag ratios was enacted and it remained in place until the newer Law Regarding the National Flag and National Anthem was passed into law in 1999.  The ratio was seven units wide and ten units long (7:10). The sun was calculated to be three-fifths of the total width and placed in the center.[3]

Due to the flag serving as one of the Imperial Military’s most powerful symbols, the use of the flag was restricted during the early years of American occupation in World War II and not lifted until 1949.[4]  The Japanese believed it was “the Rising Sun flag that would light the darkness of the entire world;”[5] a metaphor for their belief that if they won the war the world would be set right.  After the battles the flags were collected by American soldiers from captured or deceased Japanese Imperial soldiers as souvenirs.[6]

Condition: 

This flag is in poor condition.[7]  The silk has shattered (broken or disintegrated in a pattern which looks similar to broken glass) in both the warp and weft direction causing tears in many places which has also distorted the size (see Table 1).  Silk commonly shatters due to the weighting process used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and, in this case, it is possible that the greasy buildup and the airborne metal particulates common to an auto shop created a similar result.  The flag was tacked at 2 ends, but light enough that it would have still moved with air flow from ventilation, or even people moving through the shop.  This could have caused the sharp metallic particulates to move across and cut the fibers in the same way that would have happened when a weighted silk was worn.

The weave has distorted along the left side and the bottom which has caused an almost wavy, gauzy appearance.  These issues are probably caused by age and the method of display; the weight was unevenly distributed when hanging from the tacks and the flag was moved by the air current which can break the fibers.  There are pin holes in the top and bottom right corners, both of which have torn and caused areas of loss.