Famous and quite popular among the collectors set. Numerous fakes are known https://asiamedals.info/threads/fakes-of-1937-china-incident-commemorative-medals.13215/ Bronze. Size 55 mm. Weight 85.6 g. Reverse 支那事變記念 - China Incident Commemorative Medal 昭和十二年 - 1937 造幣局製 - Made by Mint...
asiamedals.info
紀元二千五百九十八年 - 2598 Year of Imperial Reign = 1938
奉祝紀元節 - Kigensetsu Celebration
第七回祝紀節奉祝大會記念品 - 7th Celebration Festival Souvenir
支那事變記念章牌 - China Incident Commemorative Medal
造幣局製 - Made by Mint
贈呈 - Gift
紀元節奉祝大會 - Imperial Reign Celebration Festival
In its original form Japan National Foundation Day /Kenkoku-sai/ was named Kigensetsu /紀元節/, translated by one pre-war scholar as "Festival of the Accession of the First Emperor and the Foundation of the Empire". The national holiday was supported by those who believed that focusing national attention on the emperor would serve an unifying purpose, holding the kokutai together with all Japanese people united by their love of the god-emperor. Publicly linking his rule with the legendary first emperor, Jimmu, and thus the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, the Meiji Emperor declared himself the one, true ruler of Japan. The claim that the emperors of Japan were gods was based upon their supposed descent from Amaterasu, the most important of the Shinto gods and goddesses. With large parades and festivals, in its time, Kigensetsu was considered one of the four major holidays of Japan.
The holiday of Kigensetsu featured parades, athletic competitions, the public reading of poems, the handing out of sweets and buns to children, with the highlight of the Kigensetsu always being a rally where ordinary people would kowtow to a portrait of the emperor, which was followed up by the singing of the national anthem and patriotic speeches whose principal theme was always that Japan was a uniquely virtuous nation because of its rule by the god-emperors. Kigensetsu provided the model for school ceremonies, albeit on a smaller scale, as classes always began in Japan with the students bowing to a portrait of the emperor, and school graduations and the opening of new schools were conducted in a manner very similar to how Kigensetsu was celebrated. When students graduated in Japan, the principal and the teachers would always give speeches to the graduating class on the theme that Japan was a special nation because its emperors were gods, and it was the duty of every student to serve the god-emperor.
Reflecting the fact that for most Japanese people under the bakufu regional loyalties were stronger than national loyalties, in the 1880s and 1890s, there was some confusion in the rural areas of Japan about just what precisely Kigensetsu was meant to celebrate, with one deputy mayor of a small village in 1897 believing that Kigensetsu was the Meiji Emperor's birthday. It was not until about 1900 that everyone in the rural areas of Japan finally understood the meaning of Kigensetsu. Aizawa, the same deputy mayor who in 1897 who thought the holiday was the Meiji Emperor's birthday, later become the mayor, in 1903 gave his first Kigensetsu speech at the local school, and in 1905 he organized a free banquet to go along with Kigensetsu, which become an annual tradition in his village.
The slow penetration of Kigensetsu in the rural areas was due to the fact that the children of most peasants did not attend school or at least for very long, and it was only with the gradual establishment of a universal education system that the imperial cult caught on. Between the 1870s to the 1890s, all of the rural areas of Japan finally acquired a school, which allowed everyone to be educated. It was only about 1910 that Kigensetsu finally started to serve its purpose as a holiday that united the entire Japanese nation in loyalty to the emperor over the length and breadth of Japan. However, the government in Tokyo was as late as 1911 still chiding local officials in rural areas for including in Kigensetsu ceremonies to honor local Shinto gods, reminding them the purpose of Kigensetsu was to unite the Japanese nation in loyalty to the god-emperor in Tokyo, not honor local gods.
Given its reliance on the State Shinto, the nationalistic version of Shinto which is the traditional Japanese ethnic religion and its reinforcement of the Japanese nobility based on the Japanese nationalism and militarism, Kigensetsu was abolished following the surrender of Japan following World War II. February 11 was also the day when General Douglas MacArthur approved the draft version of the model Constitution in 1946.
