I’m in the process of basing my WW2 Japanese battalion for Crossfire. While I’m doing that I thought I’d sought out the flags. So I needed some Rising Sun flags in 15mm scale. A quick google revealed nothing so I made my own. I’m sharing them here so other folk can benefit.
Print at home WW2 Japanese Flags
The war flag of the Imperial Japanese Army (1870–1945) was the Rising Sun. The Imperial Japanese Navy, hence the Imperial Japanese Naval Landing Forces, used a off centre variant of the Rising Sun as the Naval ensign (1889–1945). I made large (13mm high) and small (9.5mm high) flags for both. From what I can tell from google a white tube of cloth covered the flag staff.
You can download the WW Japanese flags as a PDF.
Flags in action
In my Japanese battalion for Crossfire, each of the company commanders, plus the battalion commander, are accompanied by a standard bearer. I used the larger flags from my template to make them stand out of the table.
Inspired by Brett Simpson’s Pacific War posts maybe? 🙂
For sure. Brett’s material is amazing.
These are great, Steven. My 20mm Japanese ensigns have flags which stand between 13mm and 15mm high, so I reckon your larger flags will work for that scale.
… too. I meant to write that scale too.
“My 20mm Japanese ensigns have flags which stand between 13mm and 15mm high, so I reckon your larger flags will work for that scale”. Bis Thanks Thomas.
I did the smaller flags first. They were sized to match some commercial Soviet flags I have. But once cut out I found them too small for the flag staffs I had and made the bigger ones. They fill the staff from blade to hand.
The Japanese Army also used a simple white flag (the Hinomaru flag) with “circle of the sun” in red. For my 15mm Japanese I used both flags, hand painted on the folding flag.