Antique Japanese Military Haicheng Heavy Artillery Unit Three Pagodas Army Sake Cup
This is a very interesting Japanese military sake cup, decorated with three pagodas across a body of water and a type 90 field gun. The words are "Haicheng Heavy Artillery Unit" "Victorious Return" and the soldier's name Kato is on the back. The three pagodas is interesting - it's because the city of Haicheng, located in Liaoning province in China in what was Manchukuo, has three historical pagodas from about 1000 years ago. I guess whoever commissioned this cup told the decorator to do it this way to make the cup special - and this is what we got. The pagodas actually don't look like these but it's quite interesting what the decorator tried to do. You can see pictures of the actual pagodas in this link.
Condition: Excellent - light fading of the gold in the center
Size: 2" across