Incoming! - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to this week's edition of Postal History Sunday (PHS), which I have offered on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog since August of 2020.  PHS is an opportunity for me to share a hobby I enjoy.  My intent is to make what I write here accessible to anyone who might wish to visit.  In other words, you need not be an avid postal historian to participate.  If you just find some of this mildly interesting, but have no desire to dig any deeper than one of these posts, this is for you.  On the other hand, if you are also a postal historian who loves to do your own digging, I try to write in a way that includes plenty that should interest you as well.  These posts are for you too!

Now, before we get started - put on those fuzzy slippers.  Get a favorite beverage.  Make yourself comfortable and let's see if we can all learn something new!

 

I suspect I am like many others who have gone before me in their studies of postal history - I focused first on things that originated in a certain country and learned how it made its way to other destinations.  And, of course, since I was born and live in the United States, that was a natural starting point.  There are numerous advantages (some obvious) that come with this approach.  I have familiarity with the language, monetary system, geography, and the postal service in my own country.  Perhaps less obvious, but still true, is the fact that it will be easier to find resources to help me learn. 

This week, I'm going to take a look at some letter mail that was heading to the United States - hence the title "Incoming!" Some of the same advantages apply.  For example, incoming mail will have at least some of the address panel in English.  I will have a good shot at figuring out WHERE the letter is going too.  But, there is a new level of difficulty because each country of origin may have different money systems and will certainly have different postage stamps and rates.

The first item we will explore today was mailed from Nagasaki, Japan on April 11, 1887 and arrived in Washington, DC on May 6 of the same year.  The grey-blue stamp is denominated at 5 sen, which was the appropriate rate for a simple letter to be mailed from Japan to the US.

You might actually be aware of the Japanese unit of currency, the yen, because it has been one of the most traded currencies on the foreign exchange for years - so it is natural that it would be mentioned periodically in the news.  A yen is divided into 100 sen, just like our dollar is divided into 100 cents.

What you might not know (or perhaps you need a reminder) is that the yen was not the unit of currency prior to 1871.  That means that, at the time this letter was sent, the yen (and the sen) had been in use for only sixteen years.

Sometimes it helps me to put things into perspective by looking at something that feels more familiar.  Above is an 1890 simple letter that was sent from the United States to Japan.  Yes, I know it isn't pretty - but it's what I have.  The postage required was 5 cents and a blue five-cent stamp was used to pay that postage.  It might be tempting to conclude that every nation's postage would correlate just like this one (5 sen, 5 cents).  But, that is not always the case.

For example, here is an 1895 letter from France to the United States.  Applied is a 25 centime postage stamp - which is the correct rate for a simple letter from France to the US.

The Universal Postal Union simplifies mail between nations

If you have been reading PHS for a while, you might remember that I prefer to study postal history items that were mailed prior to 1875.  So, what occurred in the mid 1870s that encouraged me to establish that boundary in my own collecting and study?  The short answer is the General Postal Union.

The Treaty of Bern, signed on October 9 of 1874, set the ground rules for exchanging mail between the twenty-two participating countries.  This signaled the beginning of the end of the bilateral postal conventions (an example is here) that were prevalent in the decades prior.  In fact, the GPU was so popular, many additional countries rapidly applied for admittance.  As a result, it was renamed the Universal Postal Union in 1878 - and the UPU still sets the protocol for mail between nations today.

Postage rates under the UPU were set using the French franc and the metric weight system.  Member countries who did not use these particular units would operate with proper conversion rates.  So, the Japan letter shown above was sent under a rate that was set as 25 centimes per 15 grams between member nations.  Five sen (and five US cents) were equivalent to 25 centimes - which explains how the postage was set.

Of course, I make this all sound so simple, but with the wide range of participants, things are bound to get complicated if you dig in enough.  For now, we're just going to leave it at this and maybe we'll dig in deeper another time!

Another letter from Japan to the US

Here is another letter from Yokohama, Japan, that was sent on January 10, 1894 to Elkader, Iowa.  Since I live in northeast Iowa, it should not take anyone all that long to figure out why this item might have been attractive to me in the first place.  Remember, sometimes the personal connections you might have are enough to encourage you to explore.

This particular item is of interest for other reasons too.  If you look closely, you will find that there are three postage stamps on this piece of mail totaling 13 sen. There is some pre-printed postage with a value of 2 sen.  So, the total postage paid is 15 sen, which means this is a letter that must have weighed more than 30 grams and no more than 45 grams - a triple weight letter.

This is actually two envelopes.  The smaller envelope with the pre-printed 2 sen in postage is glued to a larger envelope that would have been able to carry more content than the smaller envelope.  

The postmark that is found three times on this piece of mail reads "Yokohama Japan Meiji."  This of course begs the question...

What's "Meiji?"

This is part of the reason I enjoy postal history - it encourages me to explore and expand on my knowledge of the world and its history.  While it is true that I recall learning some of the history of Japan in the past, I find that holding an artifact that has a physical connection to that place and time encourages me to dig deeper and seek out greater understanding.  Allow me to summarize some of my learning (and re-learning).

Prince Matsuhito selected the name Meiji (Enlightened Rule), to mark a new era of Japanese history.  The Meiji Restoration (1868 - 1912) was a period of Westernization for Japan and resulted in the end of the shogun-led government.  This provides you with the motivation for the new monetary unit and explains an increase in mail between Japan and the United States and Europe - making it more possible for someone like me to find mail items from that period of time.

There were many foreign business interests in many of the larger Japanese cities, and the Sargent family can be found in newspapers and directories from the 1890s to early 1900s.  N.J. Sargent is listed in the Japan Weekly Mail in 1895 as a participant in water sports and the Literary Society, temporarily serving as secretary in his father’s place.

I fully recognize that some of what makes this accessible to me is the fact that Japan was seeking to interact with the "Civilized World," such as it was, at the time.  Because of that, there was a significant population of English-speakers that supported an English newspaper in Japan.  Hence, I am able to have a window into a part of the world that I would not if all resources were in a language I do not understand.

More to the Story

So, let's go back to our original cover from 1887.  To remind you of what we are looking at I show it above.  This letter was mailed at Nagasaki on April 11 and also shows a Yokohama postmark for April 15.  The back of the cover gives us even more information.

This letter arrived in San Francisco, California on April 30, after which it crossed the country to Washington, D.C..  It was taken out of the mailbag there on May 6 at 3 PM and it went out on a carrier delivery route at 4 PM that same day.

One of the things I like to do is see if I can figure out how a letter crossed the ocean, this time the Pacific Ocean, to get from here to there.  Unfortunately for me, I am more familiar with Atlantic mail sailings prior to 1875.  But, that doesn't mean I can't figure some things out!

During this period of history, mail was carried between the US and Japan by the Pacific Mail Company and the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Company.  This advertisement with a sailing table is in the Travelers Official Guide of the Railway and Steam Navigation Lines for November of 1896.

To make a long story short, I was eventually able to find the departure of the ship from Yokohama on April 15th that would carry this letter to San Francisco.  And for that, I went back to the Japan Weekly Mail.

The Oceanic, a steamship that was part of the Occidental & Oriental Line, departed on April 15, 1887, as reported in the same newspaper we referenced before.  A fifteen-day journey across the Pacific seems to be reasonable based on the sailing dates in the advertisement - so I think I succeeded in finding how this item got to the United States.

But wait!  There's more!

I neglected to point out one more marking on the back of this envelope - mostly because I wanted to have the space to explain what we are seeing here.  The marking reads "U.S.S. Palos Asiatic Squadron."

photo from wikimedia commons

The USS Palos was a tug that was refitted as a warship and sent to the Asiatic Squadron in 1870 - the first U.S. warship to traverse the Suez Canal on August 11 of that year.  Palos was involved in a minor conflict in Korea in May of 1871 and continued to serve, visiting open ocean and river treaty ports until 1891.  In 1892, the Palos, engines no longer able to propel her, was towed to Nagasaki by the USS Marion and was subsequently sold and scrapped.

For those who have interest, a second picture of the Palos can be found here.  And, if you are interested the National Cover Museum maintains a wiki of covers that show postal markings for ships, like the Palos.

And, in case you were interested, the First Sino-Japanese War started in mid-1894, a few months after the second cover to Elkader, Iowa was mailed.  Most of this war was fought on Korean and Manchurian soil.  So, while both of these covers have a loose connection, neither has a direct connection to this major event.

Where did this interest start?

Not surprisingly, it all started with the stamp.  This issue of Japanese stamps is referred to as the Koban issue.  At one point in time, I had many loose stamps of this issue and did not know much about them.  It was thanks to Mack Strathdee that my learning began on this topic several years ago.  Mr. Strathdee continues to host a blog that focuses on the Koban issue of Japan and may be of interest to some who read this PHS entry.  And, if you are interested in the stamps and postal history of Japan, you might start with the ISJP (International Society for Japanese Philately).

The series issued from 1876-1882 are the called "Koban stamps" (小判切手). The 1876 series are called "Old Koban" (旧小判) and the 1888 series are "New Koban" (新小判) series.  The "UPU Kobans" were issued in 1883 and can be found here.  These stamps continued to be issued through 1898.  (This bit of information provided by William Wetherall here.) 

The stamp above would be from the UPU Koban series of 1883.  The other cover from Japan shows a combination of UPU Kobans and New Kobans.

Today, the loose stamps have (mostly) found new homes as I focus on postal history.  So, if you ask me to show you my collection of Koban stamps - you've just seen them!  And I hope you enjoyed the tour. 

Have a great remainder of your day and a great week to come.