Help Identifying Fuze

[harto88]

Hi, this is my first post so apologies if I screw up the formatting. I was hoping someone here could help me identify a Fuze which I bought recently off e bay from a guy in Latvia which he said was a WW1 German fuse found near the city of Riga, close to the river Daugava where there was fighting between German and Russian troops. Frankly I don't know much about this subject and was buying the Fuze as I thought it would make an interesting base for a WW1 Stormtrooper bust which I am painting. However when I received the Fuze I noticed that it had some tiny Chinese Characters stamped on the base and side. I live in Hong Kong and the Characters seem to be those for "West", "Mountain", "Wood" and "Strong". They seem to have been stamped onto the base in a somewhat irregular manner with "West" also on the side. The depth varies but they look to have been stamped on when the fuze was manufactured or shortly thereafter. Can anyone shed any light on what this Fuze actually is and why someone would stamp these tiny characters on it? I have attached pictures but the characters themselves are too small to get a decent picture of.

 

[Alpini]

Hi,

that's a japanese double action fuze of 1st WW for shrapnel shells. The top cap was made of aluminium. No idea what the small characters mean these are not that well documented as on 2nd WW jap. fuzes. But hopefully the specialists for japanese fuzes will tell you...

 

[harto88]

Thanks, I contacted the seller and he said that the Japanese sometimes supplied the Russians in WW1. I had assumed the characters were Chinese but Japanese and Chinese Kanji are very similar (although the Japanese can have very different meanings!). This goes a long way to clearing things up for me, many thanks!