Very old brass handcuffs - new collection added

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

Hello Howard,

very nice find! Are all of them different (so will you keep all of them for your collection) or are some of them identical and you have one for sale? Please let me know.

Best wishes,


Michael

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

I think you will find that they are manufactured in Japan and there is a set of thumb cuffs to compliment them. They are cheaply made and easy to get out off.

Steve

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

Thank Steve for telling us that these cuffs can easily be found in Japan. Please let us know through what channel we can get a few sets.

I really want to get a set to compare to mine which are clearly marked made in "Shenyang, China" in both languages.

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

Dear Anonymous,

The 5 handcuffs pictured are Japanese, as listed on the CD-Rom produced by Stan Willis. I didnot get them in Japan, I tradeded them in Hong Kong and found out later that they were from Japan. I also confirmed that the two characters stamped below the key hole are Japanese symbols. The sets that I have are marked with a number on the swinging bow.

Steve

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

I do show the cuffs Howard has as Japanese, but Shen Yang cuffs are definitely Chinese. It is entirely possible that I am wrong and the cuff like Howards is from China. I went by what the seller told me.
STan

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

I just checked the cuffs. The Brass cuff like Howard's has the same charcters as the Chinese cuffs, so they must be Chinese and not Japanese. I will correct it on future CD revisions.
Stan

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

I just checked the cuffs. The Brass cuff like Howard's has the same charcters as the Chinese cuffs, so they must be Chinese and not Japanese. I will correct it on future CD revisions.
Stan

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

Thank Steve for raising an interesting subject about the 2 characters. I went through many scripts and also lots of webpages, aside from the conclusion, I also learnt a lot in linguistics during my search.

There are 51 Japanese alphabets (for Japanese language) plus another 51 alphabets which are specially for foreign language translation purpose having the same pronounciation as the 51 alphabets. For example "California" cannot be written in the former set, but can be expressed by using the later set of characters.

Other than the 102 Japanese characters, they also used a lot of Chinese characters (Korean too). My conclusion is Asian languages can brings you a terrible headache LOL LOL LOL.

After looking at Stan's CD under the page "China", there is a handcuff pouch with the shield of the Chinese "Gong An" which means public safety or to be more direct "police" and that 2 characters confirmed by Steve which are Japanese characters were used by the Chinese police.


I went through some current pics and also found the same characters appeared on the uniform and door painting of the poice car in China.


I then went through the Japanese police site and unfortunately I cannot find the 2 characters used anywhere. The official name and shield of the Japanese contains 3 characters.


It is a very interesting process in trying to identify one unknown item's origin. With great help of the internet and huge efforts our fellow collectors have put in, we have reference guides like Stan's CD, Alex's books, the coming Handcuff Annual 2006 and many more.

It is FUN to solve a mystery!!!

Cheers

These are very old brass handcuffs used in China during 1950-60. Just added to my collection recently.

Something gained for all.

Thanks to everyone that contributed information, I gained more expertise on the item than I expected, it was well worth the exercise.

Steve