Original Item: Only One Available. This is a lovely, worn example of a wool officer's forage cap. Not lined but retains a heavily worn leather sweatband. Features the classic string closure eyelits to the back but unfortunately no longer has the string present. The front features a lovely yellow five-pointed imperial Japanese star cap badge on a background the darker color as the cap. The leather chinstrap is still present with minimal cracking in the finish. The leather sweatband has quite a bit of cracking to it and has degraded from wear and time. There are some moth nips present throughout, but nothing too damaging. All in all very nice example of a WW2 Japanese officer cap.

Forage Caps
Forage cap is the designation given to various types of military undress, fatigue or working headwear. These varied widely in form, according to country or period. The coloured peaked cap worn by the modern British Army for parade and other dress occasions is still officially designated as a forage cap.

History
In the 18th century, forage caps were small cloth caps worn by British cavalrymen when undertaking work duties such as foraging for food for their horses. The term was later applied to undress caps worn by men of all branches and regiments as a substitute for the full dress headdress.