Japanese Postmarks

I looked up 'keyboard' instead of 'character' and indeed found kanji items available at
www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/japanese.php
and a super detailed kanji dictionary at
www.saiga-jp.com/cgi-bin/dic.cgi?m=view&f=0&sc=0&j=&e=&g=&s=&rt=0&k=&start=91&sid=1514149865_14771

Just need to educate myself more now so I can recognize the number of strokes or radicals, etc. to narrow down the search.

Don't have a smart phone, just a flip top dumb phone...which is for the best.... as it is already smarter than I am.

EDIT:  After a bit of fiddling around I found that the best way presently for me to generate appropriate kanji characters off a stamp is to google "japan map" and click on a city that has that or those characters and then copy/paste them off the side bar that google provides. 

Andrew, I did find a website that has a lot of info in English about Japanese language, history, and culture that you may find helpful.  In fact, I used it to look up a complete list of the Japanese eras here:

www.sljfaq.org/afaq/era-list.html

For easier viewing, here is an excerpt of the Eras List taken from the website, showing the postally relevant years we will need:

  Western Year            Transliterated Name         Kanji Name          Kana Name

I went with the presumption of Jan 1 being the date for the year rollover, with the hope that someone would be able to confirm it, as it was just a guess on my part.
EDIT: I went to the year converter at the site you listed and it implied, indirectly, that Jan 1 is the rollover date. 

Dear all, 

As have been questioned by Beryllium Guy and already mentioned by butterfly in this thread, the "rollover" of Japanese eras are pretty much complicated, requiring to consider the date of succession of the emperors.  

As for philatelic interest, Meiji 4 (the introduction of postal system) and later, Taisho, Showa and Heisei should be sufficient so some detail of these eras; 

- Meiji era : Jan 25, 1868 to July 30, 1912

This is a complicated era as the lunisolar calendar was used until Meiji 5. So Jan 1st, Meiji 1 = Jan 25, 1868.

• Meiji 4 : Lunisolar calendar used

• Meiji 5 : Lunisolar calendar used until Dec 2 ( = Dec 31, 1872). Dec. 3 to Dec. 31 does not exist.
  

• Meiji 6 and onwards: Gregorian calendar (e.g. Western calendar system)
  
  Jan 1, Meiji 6 = Jan.1, 1873

- Taisho era : July 30, 1912 to Dec 25, 1926

On July 30, 1912, the Meiji emperor passed away and Taisho emperor ascended the throne. New regnal era, “Taisho” became effective on the same day.

- Showa era : Dec 25 1926 to Jan. 7, 1989

On Dec 25, 1926, the Taisho emperor passed away and Showa emperor ascended the throne. New regnal era, “Showa” became effective on the same day.

- Heisei era: Jan. 8, 1989 - Apr. 30, 2019 (expected)

On Jan. 7, 1989, the Showa emperor passed away and Heisei emperor ascended the throne. New regnal era, “Heisei” became effective on the next day.

Heisei era is currently planned to end on April 30, 2019 and new era be started on May 1, 2019. The name of the new regnal era is not yet announced (causing a big problem for calendar companies ...) 

- Hironobu

Hironobu, I just wanted to say thank you very much for finding this thread and giving us such a great reference to use.

I had set aside some Japanese stamps with clear postmarks that I had intended to research to figure out the correct dates for posting in the Postmark Calendar thread, but I ended up working on other things, and they are still languishing somewhere in my collection.  I will see if I can find any of the images to post, but I may need to ask you for help from the very beginning to figure out how to read the dates correctly.

15 minutes later:  I just took a look through my files of scanned postmarks, and I cannot find any from Japan.  I have a few Japanese stamps with me in France, so I will take a look through those soon to see if there are clear postmarks that I can post.

Hironobu, I am also glad to hear that you spent 6 months in Aix-en-Provence 20 years ago.  Were you a student at that time?  Lots of international students come to Aix to study French at the local university.

This slide shows the old style where a dedicated Kanji character was often (but not always) used for 20 and 30, and the horizontal script from right to left.  This is most common in philatelic items in Meiji era. 


- Hironobu

And here's some examples of the often seen Bisected circle ("Maru-ichi") type datestamp; 




P.S.  Chris, I was a sort of visiting researcher when I was in Aix, doing my work at a research centre at Saint Paul les Durance.  I did spent awesome days with all the students there, and I am still in touch with some of these blokes :-)

- Hironobu

Dear zipper, my pleasure !

As to identify the location or place of the postmark in Meiji era, the so-called "province"  was used instead of today's prefecture.  For example, the two postmarks in my last post come from Tango province (northern part of Hyogo prefecture)  and Yamashiro province (Kyoto prefecture).   

There is a nice Wikipedia page on the Japanese province;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Japan

and a map showing the location as well as the pronunciation;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Japan#/media/File:Ancient_Japan_provinces_map_japanese.gif

which I myself always use to decipher old postmarks. 

Please note that the direction of the horizontal script in old postmarks is from right to left, whereas the present style (on the aforementioned map, for example) is from left to right ! 

- Hironobu 

So let's dive into this a little bit. I haven't attempted to determine provincial names at this point but I do want to look at and find out more about the different styles of cancellations, many of which I can illustrate from this one page in my album.

Back when I was still in high school, I had purchased a Scott Specialty Series set of pages for Japan up to 1978 plus a number of supplements which brought it current to that time, which would have been 1981 or 1982. In hindsight, I think the dealer who sold it to me was trying to get rid of it because he gave me a really good deal on the pages and the green Scott Specialty Series binder. The downside of these pages is that they were printed prior to the incorporation of pre-printed Scott nos. on the pages so you had to go back and forth in the Scott Catalogue and compare it to the page in the album to determine where each stamp was mounted. Also in hindsight, not dissimilar to working with Steiner pages now that I think about it.

As a lot of older US collectors know, the supplements were expensive to keep up with and there was not a lot of flexibility, especially if the numbering changed in the catalogue.

I supplemented this album up to about 1994 and then pretty much stopped doing anything with my Japan collection. By that time I was living in Korea and the only time I did anything with this collection was when I came home around Christmas time to see my family and get my work visa renewed to return to Busan in January of the next year. I have a lot of older Japanese stamps organized on stock pages and recently, the stamp giveaway from stainlessb stimulated me to pull this collection off the shelf as the giveaway included a large number of Japanese stamps.

So I have decided to work with the album as is and any stamps I receive past 1994 will be mounted on Steiner pages.

Here is a sample of what I was working on tonight. The earliest stamp I have from Japan is Sc. no. 62, the 10s blue, near the top of the page, from the 1876 definitive set. As you can see it is really just a space filler as it has a large chunk missing from the left, lower corner.



What I wanted to explore, however, tonight, are the different postmarks and if I can get some input as to the different styles and whether my research/guesses are accurate. Below is the stamp I noted above plus Sc. no. 64, 15s green. Scott has a small inset note with various examples of cancellations and it looks like both of these cancels are telegraph or telephone office cancels. They are a small circle within a circle with kanji characters surrounding the inner circle. On the 10 sen blue, I can see the numerals 2 (二) and 3 (三) and there is an additional character inside the inner circle whereas there isn't one on the 15 sen green. I have not attempted to identify this character.





I am including the following because they seem to be standard cancellations as described earlier in this thread, however, I have not tried to identify all of the text as yet, however, on the 5 sen, light blue, I can identify the characters for the day (日) and month (月) above the line inside the circular postmark which likely indicates the province and city name.  The 25 sen, light turquoise blue, is similar cancellation in style but with the province/city above the line and you can see the character for month, 月, and the number 8, 八, on the bottom left, below the line (everything is slightly tilted to the lower left because of the angle of the cancellation strike). Opposite this is what looks like the character for year, 年, and the number 7 (七), and the number 3, (三), underneath both of these characters.





Is the below cancellation a paquebot cancellation or the Japanese equivalent? I have not attempted to identify the characters yet.



Why does this cancellation include the english word for the country of Japan and why are there roman and arabic numerals in the date and time stamp portion of the cancellation? Was this cancelled by a foreign entity in Japan at the time?

The characters indicate telegraph cancel.

This is an example of a Roman postmark. Specifically, double circle Meiji cancel used from 1892-1894 (earlier variety and also later use are known).

In your postmark, the city is off the stamp. But technically, it is still possible to ID the city by the font/position. I'm going to guess Kobe or Kyoto, more likely the latter. But a direct comparison would be necessary to confirm. But the cancel is 27Jul1892.

I'll be tied down thru Monday. If nobody chimes in on the other cancels, I'll check this thread again after the weekend.


That is true, but have to be a little bit careful of one thing -- (日本) is "Japan". Sometimes if you see (日) by itself, it doesn't mean "day" but the other half (本) is on the opposite side of the circle cancel.  The double circle Meiji cancel directly above is such an example.  You can see the (日) next to the "N" in "JAPAN".  But you can't see the (本) on the opposite side of the circle cancel.

Nice variety of cancels!

k

I'll try to tackle one or two of these.  

You'll notice that Japan has never issued any postage due stamps.   That's because it's done with a handstamp, and you've presented an example here.   

The top character fully visible on the stamp is the second character of the compound for 'fusoku', meaning 'insufficiency', 'deficiency', 'lack', 'shortage', etc.  Just above it you can see the hint of the bottom strokes of the first character in the compound.  

Here's the compound (reading left to right):  不足

The character below the horizontal line is the character for the denomination 'sen'.    The space to the right of the character would be for the postal clerk to write in the numerical amount of the postage due.  In this case, it may have been written somewhere else on the original cover.

Here's the kanji (character) for 'sen':  銭

'Fusoku' cancellations can carry a bit of a premium.

khj: Glad to see that you had already weighed in!

To everyone else: if there is ever any contradictory information between what khj posts and what I post, assume his to be the correct one!

Just as a general rule of thumb, any Japanese stamp with a Roman-letter cancel carries a bit of a premium.  Just how much of a premium depends on the stamp it's applied to, the time frame, how full a strike it is, etc.  But generally, the older, the better.

Although I appreciate the support, I've been corrected plenty of times (I don't mind, correct information is more important than ego).  I know for a fact that Dave has "quietly" corrected some of my mistakes in the past;  he's just very polite about how he does it.  Besides, his Japanese is far better than mine.  While my mother is fluent in Japanese, it's not that easy for me to ask her anymore (sigh).