In the apartment building down the street from mine, the folks on the top floor regularly fly a couple of very large flags from their balcony. The first one I thought was either a faded Belgian flag or a stained French flag, but have found that it’s most likely the flag of Soka Gakkai, a religious/political Buddhist organization.
The second flag, however, has me baffled. It looks like an upside-down version of the national flag of Chile (with the star next to the flagpole), though the star may be a little different (6- or 8-point, for example, the wind hasn’t been very regular during the daytime). I would think that if the people living there had a close enough affinity with Chile to fly the national flag, they’d know enough to see it was upside-down, so it probably has some other meaning.
Does anyone know what this second flag could be? Thanks.
The Texas flag is close, but the Red stripe is on top and goes all the way across. It could just be an upside down Chilean flag, but I can’t imagine why. It could very well be a Japanese-Chilean couple living there, but I wouldn’t think a Chilean would be likely to fly their own flag wrong-way up. Maybe someone who really doesn’t like Chile?
Considering that the first flag is of a religious group, I was thinking the second flag was probably of something similar.
"Its is know others variants (source David Prando [pdo99]): …and with the order of stripes altered (red over white instead of white over red). Were in use c. 1820. "
Sorry for the resurrection, I checked with Tubadiva first about posting this since I found the answer to the question.
I found out last month that it actually was, in fact, a flag of Chile. As for why a guy Japan would be flying a flag of Chile upside-down, it turned out that he just really likes national flags (and was a bit careless; the Chile flag is now right-side-up). Where there used to be just two flagpoles on his balcony, as of this month there are now five, with Great Britain, India and China added to the lineup, along with Greece and Canada draped across his windows.
A minor bit of pedantry - it’s almost certainly the flag of the United Kingdom rather than the flag of Great Britain, which hasn’t been used since 1801.
