Nippon

How to read it

The rule that goods entering the United States be marked with their country of origin dates to the Tariff Act of 1890, the McKinley Tariff (section 6), as a 1992 US Customs ruling records. The Texas Historical Commission explains that Westerners called the country Japan while the Japanese called it Nippon or Nihon, so Japanese exporters wrote Nippon on their goods. In 1921 the US decided Japanese goods had to say Japan instead. The Commission notes there may be no single date when labels changed, and that collectors use 1921 as the dividing line.

Also searched as: hand painted nippon, nippon, nippon china marks, nippon mark, nippon porcelain.

When Nippon was accepted

US ports at first disagreed. In August 1914 the Treasury Department answered a question from San Francisco about brushes made in Japan and marked Nippon. The tariff act of 1913 asked for legible English words, and the Treasury’s reports showed a variance in practice at the several ports. It decided that Nippon, though the Japanese name for Japan, was so commonly used in the US that it could be considered part of the language, and that goods marked with it were legally marked (T.D. 34740). The 1921 change reversed that view.

The marks that came after Nippon

After 1921 the same exports were marked Japan. From 1947, under the Allied occupation, they were marked Made in Occupied Japan.