Excerpt from the Jürgen P. Melzer (2020) Wings for the Rising Sun. A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation. Harvard University Asia Center (Harvard East Asian Monographs), p.135.
1st variation.
Obverse
航技 for 航空技術 - Aviation Technology
"In 1935 the army established the Air Technical Research Institute (Rikugun Kōkūgijutsu Kenkyūjo) at Tachikawa. The new facility received generous funding, especially after the start of the war with China, when its bud get nearly tripled to ¥5.1 million. Yet the institute never earned the respect of the army’s pilots. The army’s flying corps looked down on the Tachikawa engineers as a group of incompetent technologists who had no idea about military affairs.123 Furthermore, the army still left the design and testing of new aircraft types entirely to civil aircraft makers, a practice that further undermined the status of the Air Technical Research Institute. Even more, the army’s leadership high- handedly decided about future aircraft developments without involving the institute’s experts. This lofty attitude had devastating consequences, as most career officers of the Army Aviation Headquarters had little or no aeronautical knowledge. Their numerous unreasonable requests for new aircraft with superior flight performance often puzzled and frustrated the engineers of the civil manufacturers, especially when their clients insisted on conflicting requirements that were impossible to implement."
1st variation.
Obverse
航技 for 航空技術 - Aviation Technology