Need help identifying/dating Japanese plate

[backyardarcheologist]

Hey everyone!

I've been doing some digging in my back yard (long story) and finding a lot of pockets of buried trash. With two exceptions, I've been able to date each hole to a tight ~5 year range. The majority of items range from 1923 to 1938, with some as late 1952 and one china plate from 1895.

Background:
Site 2C has been troublesome to date, as it didn't have much and didn't contain any easily dateable items like Owens-Illinois glass bottles. I found it within a few feet of two other small clusters of trash:

• 2A contains items from (probably) 1945-1952 but no more than 1940-1954.
• 2B had only two items I could date, from 1942 and 1945.

2C was about five feet from 2A and three feet from 2B, at roughly the same depth. Logically, they would be about the same age, and generally stratigraphy holds for most sites. As a counterexample, site 8 is so disrupted -- e.g. bottle from 1945 is a full foot above another bottle from 1952 and near a doll from <=1930 -- that I can't fully trust this.

My Problem:
I found this plate in 2C, depicting a pagoda on a sea cliff with a cherry(?) tree in the foreground. It's completely unmarked, except for "Made In Japan" stamped on the back in blue lettering. My guess, based on 2A and 2B, is that it was buried in the 1940s to early 1950s. It could be much older, however, because I found a plate from 1895 buried at the same depth as items from the early 1950s. My guess is that was a family heirloom; this could be too.

Can anyone help? In the photo, the tape measure is in inches.

<=

 

[Red-Coat]

My Problem:
I found this plate in 2C, depicting a pagoda on a sea cliff with a cherry(?) tree in the foreground. It's completely unmarked, except for "Made In Japan" stamped on the back in blue lettering. My guess, based on 2A and 2B, is that it was buried in the 1940s to early 1950s. It could be much older, however, because I found a plate from 1895 buried at the same depth as items from the early 1950s. My guess is that was a family heirloom; this could be too.

Can anyone help? In the photo, the tape measure is in inches.

Welcome to Tnet.

From March 1891 the McKinley Tariff Act required that all goods imported to the U.S. were marked in English with the country of origin. For Japanese goods, the country of origin was then often expressed as "Nippon" (the anglicised equivalent for the name used by the Japanese themselves) rather than "Japan". In 1914 the act was amended, requiring the addition of the words "Made In…" (or an equivalent term) plus the country of origin, but this was not rigorously enforced until August 1921 when US Customs also ruled that "Nippon" was a Japanese word, and no longer acceptable.. It had to be replaced with the word "Japan".

Some exporters adopted the required wording before it became mandatory, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

There were no imports from Japan between 1941-1945, for obvious reasons, and they didn't resume until the late summer of 1947. From then, the required marking was "Occupied Japan" or "Made in Occupied Japan" until 1949, at which time it was decreed that "Occupied Japan", "Made in Occupied Japan", "Made in Japan" or just "Japan" were all acceptable. That continued until 1952 when occupation ended and the requirement switched back to "Japan" or "Made in Japan".

So, your plate will most likely be from between around 1921 (or possibly as early as around 1914) and not later 1941; or 1949 and later.