{"id":5247,"date":"2005-06-20T11:08:10","date_gmt":"2005-06-20T16:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/japan\/?p=88"},"modified":"2014-08-30T14:13:37","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T14:13:37","slug":"hinomaru-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2005\/06\/hinomaru-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Hinomaru Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/h-net.msu.edu\/cgi-bin\/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&#038;list=H-Japan&#038;month=0506&#038;week=c&#038;msg=KLA3te9wRuEeoptIfVOuuQ&#038;user=&#038;pw=\">H-Japan<\/a>, there&#8217;s a discussion about the Hinomaru, Japan&#8217;s national flag.  I was intrigued and clicked over to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flag_of_Japan\">Wikipedia<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>I knew that the sun represented Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess in Japanese mythology, but did not know that this sun-as-red-circle design was on folding fans in the Genpei Wars.  I am guessing that Wikipedia is referring to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Yashima\">Battle of Yashima<\/a>, famous for a warrior on a horse knocking a fan off of a ship&#8217;s mast in some awesome display of archery skill.  I did not realize (or chose to forget) that it was a fan with a hinomaru.  Maybe there were other scenes with the flag but I&#8217;ve never read the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heike_monogatari\"><em>Heike Monogatari<\/em><\/a> in full.  [You medievalists out there, help!]<\/p>\n<p>I also visited the <a href=\"http:\/\/ja.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/%E6%97%A5%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%B8\">the Japanese Wikipedia<\/a>.   This entry mentions that the Hinomaru had been used by Satsuma vessels, but then was later used as a sign of the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Boshin War(1868-9)!  Supposedly the restorationists used a flag with the imperial Chrysanthemum crest.<\/p>\n<p>I did not know all of this, and I&#8217;m surprised that the Hinomaru was used by Tokugawa Loyalists.  Does this suggest that the red circle was not always associated with the imperial throne?  I don&#8217;t know.  Anyone know what the politics was of using the Hinomaru around the Meiji Restoration and how it came to be a symbol of Japan?  Or any prior use of the flag?  Or any bizarre trivia?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at H-Japan, there&#8217;s a discussion about the Hinomaru, Japan&#8217;s national flag. I was intrigued and clicked over to Wikipedia. I knew that the sun represented Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess in Japanese mythology, but did not know that this sun-as-red-circle design was on folding fans in the Genpei Wars. I am guessing that Wikipedia is&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,61,194,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-nationalism","category-politics","category-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1mD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5780,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions\/5780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}