Japanese Naval Signal Flag #6—Code "Roku" 最初の6の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「ろく」

The Roku or ろく is the Japanese Maritime Flag for the Number Six.  It has a white field with red dexter bend.

The Number 6 Auxiliary Japanese Naval flag is visible with the cover art of this model, Yamato model ship.  It is the flag in between Juliette and Golf. 

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #5—Code "Go" 最初の5の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「ご」

The Japanese Maritime Flag for the Number 5 is the inverse of Romeo.  It has yellow field with red cross.

Note that IJN #5 Aux Flag is the inverse of the Romeo-R ICS flag.

You can see the Go flag in use with IJN Coded Signals.  The Imperial Japanese Navy Auxiliary Number flags were used International Maritime Flags in the Japanese Navy.

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #4—Code "Yon" 最初の4の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「よん」

The Japanese Maritime four flag has four blue dots, which any civilization can recognizes as a good representation of the number four.















The Imperial Naval Signal flags are a rarity of a flags.  They mostly live on in the memory of history books. 

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #3—Code "San" 最初の3の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「さん」

The Japanese number 3 three is basically an echo of the Kanji - Chinese Character - for the number three.  The Kanji for three consists of three horizontal stripes.

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #2—Code "Futa" 最初の2の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「ふた」

The Japanese Naval signal flag for the number 2 is called Futa ふた.  The design of the flag has a blue field with two yellow rectangles along in the middle of the flag near the fly and hoist.

 The unique Japanese auxiliary number flags were used with international maritime flags.  Recently in an Anime series about female sailors, the Aux #2 flag has appeared leading with X-Ray and India for a code of 2XI.

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #1—Code "Hito" 最初の1の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「ひと」

There are several types of maritime flags to represent the number one.  Most famously the International Maritime standard uses a flag that looks like the national flag of Japan.  However it is a pennant and the red disc is off center towards the hoist.

NATO has number one flag that looks like the of Spain; because it is a horizontal tribar of red, yellow, red.  Thus its nickname is 'UNO'.

Russia oddly uses the International Maritime flag in a different way for its numbers.  The Alpha flag is the number one flag for Russian allied fleets.  Luckily Alpha is also the first letter of the alphabet, so it makes sense.

But the Japanese Navy has created unique flags.  Their flags have an International Maritime feel, but they are unique to Japan.

The Number 1 flag of Japanese Naval forces has a white background with blue diagonal stripe from the lower hoist to the upper fly (a dexter bend).  In a what the Japanese flag is very effective since the single blue line is a unique flag even among national flags and reflects the single line of one, as it is used in Western and Chinese symbols.  The Indo-Arabic-Western number for one in a single vertical line, while the Eastern symbol for one is single horizontal line.

Japanese Naval Signal Flag #0—Code "Rei" 最初の0の日本の海軍艦隊信号-名前「れい」

The Japanese Maritime Zero Flag uses the colours blue and white.  It has the pattern of the Zulu flag but in the hoist and fly triangles is blue, while on the chief and compartment triangles it is white.

The Japanese Auxiliary Zero Flag make intuitive sense, more so than the International Maritime Flag.  Firstly, the empty hourglass shape indicates that time is up—it has reached the zero hour.  You can imagine that the blue triangles on the hoist and fly are ocean or sky.  Likewise Zero Flag follows the shape-pattern of the Zulu flag.  Thus Zero and Zulu combine for a unique flag.

 You can see the Zulu and Zero flag with Lima in the first upper left hand column.  On the right page you can see the codes that all begin with Rei.