Japan Seals- Assistance Please

I have an envelope full of China stamps which I am sorting through and have come across the pair of stamps in scan below. They are printed on a slightly translucent rice paper, or something like it. I am completely out of my collecting area and do not have a China catalogue so any help identifying these stamps, and an indication of any value, would be very much appreciated. (Click on image to enlarge).

Terry

Edit for omission. TC.

I don`t think these are Chinese stamps... maybe some kind of Japanese seal...I`m curios what our experts will say.

These are Japanese seals. The red seals of both are identical, came from Department of Taxation, similar to our IRS. What kind of function do they serve? I don't know. Maybe someone will find some sort of receipt with these affixed.

Forgot to say that those black hand chops are names of persons who handles these documents.

Thank you Wadmalatz and fotofila. Now I am also curious about these seals and chops, and their function.

Terry

I have altered the topic title so that it might attract the Japan experts on here.

Many thanks for the info so far.
Terry

The chops are simply the East Asian equivalent of the "signature".

Hi khj,

Yes, fotofila said that too. Any ideas on date or value?

Terry

Dear Terry, these are slik tax revenues from Japan, issued on 1873 and used until about 1877. Very,very interesting items, especially in used condition.

During that period, silk was one of the major export commodity of Japan, and in order to assure its quality (and also to finance the required cost for quality assurance, I suppose), the government proclaimed the regulation for controlling the production of raw silk thread in 1873, putting producers under an obligation to affix a revenue stamp in the shipment of raw silk thread.

Several types of these silk tax revenues were issued, but I assume the ones shown here are for "small skeins" (Ko-Kuri-Maki), which is printed in red on the center of (japanese) native paper strip of approximately 24 x 167mm. So it looks something like a newspaper wrapper. The revenue is used to join two silk skein of approximately 30g each; then the producers' hand chop were put as a sort of seal. The revenues were sold in bundles of 100, and costed 3 sen 5 run per bundle. The characters are read as from right to left, top to bottom, "Oo-kura-sho / Sozei-Ryo", which means "Ministry of Finance / Tax Bureau". No value inscription. The black chops are indeed the names of the producers, which could be possibly read as "Ko-te-??? / Nambu (or Minabe) Jin-taro" (right) and "Sakuma Shigesaku / Tamura Mineji (or Jitsu-ji)" (left). No information on the date.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any good image of the unused ones (I do not possess any of them), so I will attach the images of the relevant pages of the Government Proclamation, No. 32, January 1873 (Meiji 6). The size and usage is shown in the right page of the first image, and the essay is shown in the top of the right page in the second image.




This revenue is not listed in the historical & famous Forbin revenue catalog. They are listed in "Standard Catalogue of the Japanese Revenue Stamps" by Shimomura (several versions, but out of print), and "Japanese Fiscal Stamp Catalogue" by Furuya (2011, available on market), but unfortunately both in Japanese�c

I am personally really interested to have closer examination�c

Sorry for the rather long post, but I hope this helps your questions.

Regards, unechan (from Osaka, Japan)

P.S. The closeups of the pages are added.

That is fantastic information unechan, and to the forum!
Extended knowledge of a particular country is great to have on SCF, for those of us that still collect 'world-wide'!
DavidR

Dear DavidR, thanks for the warm welcome ! Indeed, I joined the forum at the beginning of this year but was inactive since then. I hope I can be a little help for those struggling with Japanese stamps, and especially revenues.

Correction to the description in the previous post : the cost of the revenue should be "3 sen 5 rin per bundle" and not "run"; it seems the spell check function has just gone in the wrong way�c

Regards, unechan

Dear all,

Just found a nice example of the silk revenue;

http://eng.ssjp.dk/rev/eng/rev/silkrev.html

Please note the description needs slight correction (it states "This is revenue on raw silk and eggs �c" but it should be "This is revenue on raw silk�c").

Regards, unechan

Welcome unechan,

Thank you very much for the detailed information you have provided about these wonderful little seals. I am astounded at your expert knowledge. They were the most visually interesting of all the stamps in the envelope I was sorting through, and quite the sort of thing that appeals to me. I deduce from your text that you have an interest in these seals, so later today I will look them out and try posting a high resolution scan of both seals, front and back. If that will not work I can send you high resolution scans direct; all you need do is send your email address to me at my email address, which you should be able to access on the site tools.

Very best regards
Terry

Dear Terry,

Thank you very much for the warm welcome. I am not an expert nor specialist in this field; I only know the appropriate references and informations which I just translate (and modify a bit) and supply to the community ! I also have to thank to the information archive on internet; it is really amazing that document sources such as those Proclamations of some 140 years ago could be checked so easily.

I am really looking forward to seeing the high-res scan to have a closer look, but judging from the "style" of the chops and the names on them, I believe your pretty seals are genuine. I must confess that this is the first time I've seen the used version of this silk revenue !!

Regards,
unechan

Very much a learning experience for me on this one.
Tom

Hi unechan,

Apologies for the delay in posting the hi-res scans, but here they are, front and back. This is as big as the site will let me load. The paper strips are 23mm wide x 33mm and 45mm in length, so on my screen the images are showing at about 3x actual size. I will be interested in what you think of them.

Regards
Terry