Posted by Noel Chiappa (98.166.150.196) on February 15, 2011 at 00:12:54:
In Reply to: Nengo Seal Reading posted by Irwin on February 14, 2011 at 22:52:35:
"I cannot definitively read the complete date on the nengo seal"
That one is indeed a little tricky, as some of the characters are somewhat malformed - and in some fairly arbitrary orientations to boot!
The 'year' character (年) is at the 4-o'clock position, with the 'mei' of 'Meiji' at the very top. So that must be a somewhat malformed 'ji' at the 1-o'clock, and the thing that looks like a 'T' on its side at the 3-o'clock must be a damaged 'ju' ('10').
(You can see a similar 'ji' character here:
http://www.yoshitoshi.net/others.html
in the sample nengo date seal there.)
The rest is pretty easy: 5 月 ('month') 15 日 ('day'). So 'Meiji 10th year 5th month 15th day'.
Noel