Flag of Japan ring around the red sun. It was later replaced by a flag that consisted of the 〒 postal mark in red on a white background. Two recently designed national flags resemble the Japanese flag. In 1971, Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, and it adopted a national flag that had a green background, charged with an off-centered red disc that contained a golden map of Bangladesh. The current flag, adopted in 1972, dropped the golden map and kept everything else. The Government of Bangladesh officially calls the red disc a circle; the red color symbolizes the blood that was shed to
Flag of Benin less than a year later on August 1, 1960. In 1972, a coup d'état took place in the country, with the new government aligning itself with Marxist–Leninist ideals. In order to symbolize the revolutionary change, the regime renamed the country to Benin and instituted a new flag three years later. This featured a green field charged with a five-pointed red star in the top-left canton. However, the regime's flag was never adopted by law, making it only the "de facto" flag of Benin. The green flag remained in place until 1990, when economic problems and the weakening of the Soviet