IDENTIFICATION PLZ: help determine what this gold/black pin is??? Thanks :)

Question

Hi there :)

hoping someone here can help me determine what this gold and black pin is???

It resembles the style of pins that would be attached

to a military hat or uniform...

it has a s***w type back.

There's a lotus flower design I think at the base of the design,

with the kanji characters for the number one.

It has gold trim on the obverse and reverse with an inlaid black matte background.

It is a perfect circle and is a bit smaller than an American or Canadian one cent.

It may be Chinese or Japanese, not sure.

Hoping someone here with more expertise can help out... :)

here's a link to a detailed close-up picture I took of it...

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/6752/asianuniformpinpr4.jpg

Thanks so much,

Gino C.

Answer 1

It's one of school pins in Japan.

Each school has its own pin for students.

Answer 2

I can't say exactly, but I don't think it's related to anything military. It kinda of looks like a pin that's found on some Japanese school uniforms. Usually, boys wear something like this on the collars of their winter uniforms.

Perhaps the name of the school  has the characters 第一 ("Dai ichi") in it. 第一 just means "the first" or "number one".

Some big cities with lots of schools aren't too original in choosing school names. They just pick generic names like "number 1" or "number 2". Maybe this is what this pin is.

Answer 3

Looks like generic high school badge. The writing says 'Dai Ichi' meaning the 'first' or 'number one'; a lot of high school has names where it comprises of x*x Prefecture/City High School 1, x*x Prefecture/City High School 2, x*x Prefecture/City High School 3 etc so I'm guessing it's one of those.

There is no other clue on the badge itself to indicate which prefecture/city/era it is from but most likely to be for boys uniform, and old fashioned one at that.