Interesting Cancel On Japanese Stamp

I'm not sure which stamp this is - it's possibly not a postage stamp - but it has an interesting cancel:



At the top it reads Butterfield and Sons and at the bottom John Swire and Sons. Both firms (which were partners) were located in Kobe, where John Swire opened an office in 1887.

This is the stamp the right way up:



I wonder whether someone could identify the stamp and whether someone knows what kinds of cancels these were.

All assistance greatly appreciated!

Another interesting Japanese cancel is this one on a stamp from 1947 (2nd National Athletic Meeting. Kanazawa). It's a square cancel with rather irregular looking script. I'd be most interested in knowing something about this one too.

Your first is a Receipt stamp. I can't quite make out the word for the value because it's obscured by the 'RE' of SWIRE. It is n number of sen, anyway.

I can't make anything out of the cancellation on your second. If it is Japanese text at all, it's so stylized as to be completely beyond me.

tonymacg, are these receipt stamps common? The internet (including ebay) doesn't yield any information about - or further examples of - these stamps.

As for the second stamp, I also wondered if the script was Japanese. When I first glanced at it, I actually thought it was one of the Chinese liberation areas stamps, a few of which look quite similar to this one. I was surprised when I saw it was a Japanese stamp.

I've located a few used examples on ebay but all the ones I've found so far have regular cds.

I can't answer for your specific receipt stamp, jimjamtwo. (I don't collect Japan, I just read Japanese.) However, in general Japanese revenue stamps seem to be quite plentiful.

I wonder if the cancellation on your second stamp is part of some larger, stylised, design representing some branch of athletics.

Ken Clark of the Japan Philatelic Group was kind enough to reply to an email I sent him today about these stamps. He says that the 'first is a revenue stamp with a non-postal seal of a company, the second is a roller type cancel.'