The Order of the Illustrious Dragon (Chinese: 龍光章 ''Lóngguāng zhāng'') was an award of the Empire of Manchuria. It was established by Imperial Decree No. 1 on March 1, 1934 and published by law of April 19, 1934. The order consisted of only one class: Grand Cordon. The order was the equivalent of the Japanese

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Design

The gold medal is star-shaped and consists of eight bundles of five smooth golden rays each. There is a green, enamelled short beam between each individual beam. The medallion is surrounded by 28 red jewels and shows a stylized Chinese dragon in the center, which is accompanied by a piece of a golden cloud. The dragon itself represented the Emperor,

Puyi Aisin-Gioro Puyi (; 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on 1 ...

. The medal of the order and the associated order star match in their appearance. The gem has an openwork, green enamel hanger that shows a stylized cloud group consisting of a central cloud vortex and two concentric pentagons. The corresponding rosette is white and shows a blue ring in the middle. On the reverse side of the badge there are four characters - "勲功位章" ("Order of Merit Badge"). The sign through a rectangular bracket on the upper beam is attached to an intermediate link of light green enamel, which is an openwork slotted pentagon, into which a similar smaller pentagon and a spiral are inscribed, symbolizing clouds. At the upper end of the intermediate link there is a transverse eyelet with a ring for attaching to the order's ribbon. The award was worn on a blue sash with white stripes, representing the sun and a white sun, from the right shoulder and a breast star.

Recipients

It was awarded 33 times and was discontinued in 1945 after the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...

of Manchuria. *

Maximiliano Hernández Martínez Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (20 October 1882 – 15 May 1966) was a Salvadoran military officer and politician who served as the president of El Salvador from 4 December 1931 to 28 August 1934 in an acting capacity and again in an officia ...

Hideki Tojo Hideki Tojo (, ', December 30, 1884 – December 23, 1948) was a Japanese politician, general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and convicted war criminal who served as prime minister of Japan and president of the Imperial Rule Assistan ...

References

Bibliography

*Ionina, N. ''Pu Yi and Manchukuo awards'', 100 great awards. Veche, 2006. , pp. 155-157. *Kua, Paul L. T. ''Manchukuo's Award System and Some of its Lesser Known Awards'', The Journal of the Orders and Medals Society of America, 1998. Vol. 49, no. 1. pp. 17-26. *Neubecker, Ottfried. ''On the orders of Manchukuo'', Uniforms Market. Issue 8, p. 5 *Peterson, James W. ''Orders and Medals of Japan and Associated States'', Orders and Medals Society of America, 2000, 3. Edition, , p. 140. *Rozanov, O. N. ''Japan: History in awards''. Russian political encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2001. , pp. 103-110. *Rozanov, O. N. ''Reward systems in the politics and ideology of the countries of North-East Asia'', Monuments of historical thought, 2008. , pp. 131-137. *Usov, V. N. ''The last emperor of China: Pu Yi (1906-1967)'', Olma-Press, 2003. , pp. 177-178. Orders, decorations, and medals of Manchukuo Awards established in 1934 {{orders-medals-stub