Antique Japanese shinto shrine mirror. The central motif has a turtle and two cranes beaks meeting in the center. The background has pine trees, paulownia, plum, and bamboo branches with a turtle walking along the shoreline. The characters under the heavens, are marked under the central turtle.
There is a large sixteen petalled chrysanthemum above the turtle. It is rare for a 16 petalled chrysanthemum to survive because after 1870 there was a law that banned the use of chrysanthemums...
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