What is this odd Japanese Symbol with a Dakuten? [duplicate]

Question

I am currrently studying through the Japanese-English book called カルテットII, and this section goes over understanding the body of a text through context clues in the title. This is the example poem they offered:

However, look at the end of the title after 金子みず: the “punctuation” is like the first stroke from ふ with a dakuten. What is this? Is this some odd error, or does it have actual meaning? I do not even know what this is called, so I can not begin to research it in any meaningful way. I can only conclude it related to designating the author, since the part is outside the parenthesis.

Answer 1

As Strechie-go mentioned, this is an iteration mark for Hiragana, in the same way that 々 is an iteration mark for Kanji.

Here are some additional details:

Kana uses different iteration marks; one for hiragana, ゝ, and one for katakana, ヽ. The hiragana iteration mark is seen in some personal names like さゝき Sasaki or おゝの Ōno, and it forms part of the formal name of the car company Isuzu (いすゞ).

Unlike the kanji iteration marks, which do not reflect sound changes, kana iteration marks closely reflect sound, and the kana iteration marks can be combined with the dakuten voicing mark to indicate that the repeated syllable should be voiced, for example みすゞ Misuzu. If the first syllable is already voiced, for example じじ jiji, the voiced repetition mark still needs to be used: じゞ rather than じゝ, which would be read as jishi.

While widespread in old Japanese texts, the kana iteration marks are generally not used in modern Japanese outside proper names, though they may appear in informal handwritten texts.

So in 金子みすゞ, the ゞ denotes the repetition of す but with a dakuten — ず. This is Misuzu Kaneko's name, who was a Japanese poet from the early 20th century.

This question has additional details as well.

Answer 2

It's an iteration mark denoting the repetition of the previous hiragana, with a dakuten.