Help identifying signature

Question

I am trying to identify what I'm assuming is a name or signature written in Japanese. The author of the note was a German/Japanese American, and he wrote the note to identify the name of an artist in 1928. The character is directly after the English word "by" written in script. Thank you for any assistance, including letting me know this is not Japanese or undecipherable if either is the case.

That's the problem, I'm unsure who the artist is. The only identifucation is with this character. The author of the note was Sadakichi Hartmann. It is possible he was identifying himself because he did paint pastels. — Thomas, Mar 01 '16 at 14:55

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 01 '16 at 15:04

4

This looks like it could be an extremely slanted version of by 「キ」 except that the Japanese "parentheses" 「」 are on the other side, as is customary for vertical (top-to-bottom) writing:

﹁
キ
﹂

キ would be read as ki and it probably isn't intended as a word, but could be an "initial" (although that's not customary in Japan), something like "K".

answered Mar 01 '16 at 15:04

Earthliŋ

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Maybe I should add that this is just a wild guess. As you can see, キ is usually slanted the other way... – Earthliŋ Mar 01 '16 at 15:36
Perhaps it's meant to be a mirror image, which would correct the slant and the quotes? – Thomas Mar 01 '16 at 16:07
Who (apart from da Vinci) writes mirrored? – Earthliŋ Mar 01 '16 at 16:20
He was fairly eccentric. – Thomas Mar 01 '16 at 17:14
1

This 「キ」 looks just fine to me. I guess he simply wanted to "italicize" the letter キ because it's placed on the right of the slanted 'by'. – naruto Mar 01 '16 at 21:31

Help identifying signature

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