Trips to Mom's: Stamps from Japan

Japan has a very long history, but it was more or less isolated from the rest of the world until Perry landed there in 1853. As a result stamps were only used from about 1872. Our oldest is Scott 80 from 1888. It's the only stamp with English on it, saying both "Imperial Post" and "Japanese Post".

By the turn of the century (1900), we have Scott 92, 93, 97

By 1913, they have a larger set of stamps (Scott 116, 117, 119, 121)

These same designs were continued for decades. Sometimes there were minor changes, like the 3 Sen stamp (Scott 119) 1913 which could also be Scott 131 (1914) or Scott 131b (1924). The 7 Sen stamp (Scott 135) is from 1930.

Scott 194 (1926) and Scott 197 (1937) start to show landscape images.

Japan started expanding, leading up to World War II. We have a stamp from 1937 for Manchukuo (Scott 86), which was the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, which went back to being part of China after the war.

Japan itself continued with landscape images, but also some military figures, like General Maresuke Nogi (Scott 259) and General Heihachiro Togo (Scott 261).

General Togo was upgraded from 4 sen to 5 sen in 1942 (Scott 331).

By 1944, Japanese stamps become "imperforate" -- that is, they have no perforations, as seeen in Scott 358 (Coal Miners). Maybe the machines to perforate the stamps were damaged in the war?

This helps identify some stamps. For example, I first thought this was Scott 275, but that stamp has perforations. Since our stamp has no perforations, we think it is Scott 361.

This lack of perforation continues thru 1947, with Scott 362, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 372.

Scott 372 might be Scott 370 (or even 388) -- I'm not sure how to tell.

And there are other quality issues. Note the color difference in the following two stamps

This seems to be recognized in the Scott catalog as being 364a and 364b.

By 1947, things are back to more normal, at least in terms of stamps, with Scott 391 and 393.