Japan: What are these? Possibly First Day Postmarks?

OK, I think they are railway station names? I'll leave it to someone more familiar with Japan...

Then I got the date order wrong on the cancels shown by the OP. The year would be Showa 11 (1936) and the dates would be 8Oct-13Oct1936. What I thought might have been railway station designations might be post office names? They appear to be some specific station names.

Hi all,

At a first glance I thought they are Fu-Kei-In, but in fact they are very likely to be railway station stamps ("Eki Stamps"), which is a commemorative hand stamp to commemorate one's visit to a railway station.  Here's my analysis;

As been already spotted by khj and daniel , they do resemble Fukei-In 風景印 (pronounced as "who" "kay" "inn"), literally meaning "scenery date stamps", introduced in 1931 (Showa 8 6) - more precisely called as Fukei-Iri-Tsuushin-hizuke-In 風景入通信日付印 (meaning communication datestamp with scenery) and is categorized as Pictorial Datestamps (JPD) in "Handbook of Japanese Postmarks", 2008 by JPS.  

One notable thing about this collection is, (also already spotted by khj ) that they all bear railway station names, ending with "Eki" = station ;

---

First image

  Top left : Kofu station / Top right: Shimo-Suwa station / Bottom left: Musashi-Kogane-i station / Bottom right: Kami-suwa station

Second image

  Top left : Kiso-Fukushima station / Top right: Hida-Ichinomiya station / Bottom left: Shiojiri station / Bottom right: Tajimi station

Third Image

  Nikko station

---

And this raised some question to me...

• As a rule, "Post Office" is omitted in postal date stamps (e.g. "OSAKA" instead of "OSAKA Post Office") unless there are needs to precisely distinguish the type of the post office (such as post office vs postal & telegraph office). This means that, for example, the post office of the first image, top left shall be "Kofu Eki post office".
• Present Japanese post offices with "Eki" = "station" in their name do exist, but most of them bear "Eki-mae" (meaning "in front of the station") in the post office name; e.g. "Kofu Eki-Mae P.O." rather than "Kofu Eki P.O." (which does not exist).
• In addition to that, even if we transcribe the post offices listed above as "Eki-mae" post offices, some of them do not exist today and doesn't seem to  have existed in the past (for example, Hida-Ichinomiya).

Similar looking hand stamps, called as "Eki stamp" = station stamps do exist to commemorate one's visit to railway station.  This is pretty popular for railway enthusiasts in Japan, and rare Eki Stamps, especially from local railroads, is considered to be collectible item.   I do have almost no knowledge on Eki stamps, but I knew that current Eki stamps do not have date inscriptions, and this is why my initial thoughts was focusing on Fu-Kei-In...

And after some search on the Web,  I noticed that in old days (pre-war), Eki stamps do have date inscriptions.  Here's some examples of pre-war Eki stamps (scroll down the page and you can find some images), which do resemble the ones shown in this thread - looks bingo to me.   According to the author of this web page, the Eki stamps were first introduced on Showa 6 (1929 1931) at Fukui Station, and became popular at around Showa 7 (1930 1932) to encourage domestic tourism (which people heavily utilized railway).  

So, my conclusion is the hand stamps shown in this thread is Eki (station) stamps from Showa 11 (1934 1936).  The original owner seems to have enjoyed his train trip to Shinshu area (Nagano prefecture), stopped at stations and collected Eki stamps as a memory for his/her journey. 

Although they are nothing to do with philately, I would consider them as very nice and pretty rare back-of-book items, commemorating the good old early Showa era when people enjoyed traveling in a slow-life manner.

Thanks for the nice hand stamps, and I enjoyed solving the puzzle :-) Also many thanks to Chris (Beryllium Guy ) for notifying me this interesting thread !

Hironobu

Hello Mr. H, 

This is a package of Japanese traditional socks, "Ta-bi" (link to Wikipedia).  It reads as "Fukusuke Ta-Bi", where Fukusuke is the most well know manufacturer of Tabi, founded back in 1882.  You can find the same logo (mascot) on your package.   The bottom inscription reads as Chosen Kogyo Ltd., which might be the name of the reseller.    

Another nice BOB item from good old Japan 

- Hironobu
 

Hello dorincard , expressing Japanese words and pronunciations in alphabet is (in my opinion) pretty tricky, and that's why I've used different expressions for this date stamp. 

I've used "Fu-Kei-In" (three syllables) which corresponds to the three Kanji characters. Of course it could be either written as Fu-Kei-In, Fukei-In of even Fukeiin, but the double "i"s in the latter expression would be pretty confusing thus not recommended.  

The pronunciation of the first Kanji letter, 風, starts with a "f" sound, followed by a long "u" sound, so perhaps

"who" with "f" instead of "w", or
"fool" without the last "l"

might be the most adequate.  Pretty tricky to reproduce the original sound...



Good question ! The answer is, we use both Nippon and Nihon, and there's no apparent rule on which should be used when - its case by case !

Formal documents etc seems to be using "Nippon" (but without clear rule) - but at least the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications uses "NIPPON" for Japanese stamps. 

A quick search on Web said that "Nippon" is the original (or older) pronunciation, and "Nihon" is the shortened version which emerged in the Edo era.  There is a place called "Nihon-Bashi" in Tokyo, and "Nippon-Bashi" in Osaka, both meaning "Japan bridge" and is written as same in Kanji characters.  Pretty complicated even for Japanese people...

- Hironobu 

Thanks for all the great info and additional background, unechan!


All your Showa-Western years are different from mine by 2 years. On mine, Showa 8 is 1933, Showa 11 (1936)...

Am I reading my year conversion table wrong?