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Subject:Re: Chinese porcelain mark translation - advice please
Posted By: Bill H Sun, May 20, 2018
Well Martin, I knew from past experience you'd be able to clean up whatever mess I made, and I thank you for it. I'm just ashamed to say, after owning that soba cup with the mark for more than 15 years, I still copied the wrong character for 良 and squinted past the fact that Bowes used 太 in his version of the mark. Not my worst sin, I suppose, when it comes to Japanese.
In the case of 太, it actually shares some functions with 大, but I'm unsure if these apply to Japanese. The character 呉 is one name for Wu in Mandarin Chinese or Ng in Cantonese, and an old provincial name for present-day Jiangsu. The latter makes me wonder if the Japanese picked up Go by way of Cantonese?
In any event, am glad to see I'm not the only source of confusion about this mark and look forward to all comments.
Best regards,
Bill H.
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