Watch List notes:

JAPAN: AE medal, ND (1907), 22mm, Count Nogi Maresuke portrait in military uniform partly left //his poem Gaisen (Triumph), written after the end of the Russo-Japanese War which translates as "million-strong Imperial Army on a crusade against powerful barbarians / the battle and siege resulted in a mountain of dead bodies / I do not want to face those back home for I am ashamed / that in spite of the triumph, so few men have returned", EF. Count Nogi Maresuke (1849-1912), was a Japanese general in the Imperial Japanese Army and a governor-general of Taiwan. He was one of the commanders during the 1894 capture of Port Arthur from China. He was a prominent figure in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, as commander of the forces which captured Port Arthur from the Russians. He was a national hero in Imperial Japan as a model of feudal loyalty and self-sacrifice, ultimately to the point of suicide. Nogi and his wife Shizuko committed suicide shortly after the Emperor Meiji's funeral cortege left the palace. The ritual suicide was in accordance with the samurai practice of following one's master to death (junshi). In his suicide letter, he said that he wished to expiate for his disgrace in Kyushu, and for the thousands of casualties at Port Arthur. He also donated his body to medical science.

Estimate: 30-50 USD