beautiful small Japanese bronze metal Buddha statue w/ lotus flower mark

We know almost nothing about this small Buddha figure except that we were told it was Japanese, and we believe is solid bronze.

It's 2 1/2" tall, nicely detailed and very heavy for it's size. It's marked as shown - we can't read any of the characters, sorry! And we couldn't begin to guess at an age, though we don't think it's antique.