"Japanese Empire" Upon What Stamps Does This Appear?

Hi,
I'm almost embarrassed to ask this question, for I should very well know the answer.

I've got a couple of stamps with blurred cancellation marks that have "Japanese Empire" arched across the top. I first assumed these were from Manchuko but they are not.

They must be for a country occupied by the Japanese pre/during WWII. Any ideas as to which?

Thank you!

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***
*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

A picture would really make this question very clear

Peter

Something like these center two stamps?

That's straight-up Japan!

Not sure about the one on far left. The other 3 are the New "Koban" Series issued March 10, 1888.

Hi,
You solved my mystery. Yes, they are from Japan - 1888 or so.

I have two "excuses" for not knowing their origin.
- The cancellation marks fully covered the traditional Japanese chrysantimum (spell?) flower symbol.
- The words "Japanese Empire" caused me to ASSUME they were from the late 1930s thru early '40s.

Thank you all for your input, as always, it is very much appreciated.

No apologies needed. This stuff is confusing!

I've been thinking about creating a page (or pages) that helps people identify stamps of Asia, especially those that have no Western writing on them at all.

You're giving me some inspiration to put this a little higher on the priority list!

That is a terrific idea! There were many countries that were occupied by Japan before/during WWII and stamps were issued during the occupation that are very difficult to decipher.

I'd like to see more Asian stamp info. I understand there's some demand for Asian stamps for some reason.

And one thing that makes some of the Japan and occupation issues difficult is that Japan went through a period (during the war? and/or leading up to it? -- I'm not at my references right now) of not having any Western writing on their stamps, so it can definitely get pretty thorny.

Thanks for the encouragement! I should really get working on this.

I added a World Stamp Identifier to Stamp Smarter a few weeks ago. It currently has 3000 entries but I am close to adding an additional 1000 entries in next few days.

One of the big challenges is to support non-English characters. Displaying an Asian or Cyrillic character on a web page isn't too hard but providing a method that a user can type these non-standard characters to search on is not simple.

Non-standard keyboards can be installed on the users computer at the operating system level but this is not something most users want to do. I overcame the issue by adding 'popup' keyboards on the web page.

I have the Cyrillic character stamps done but will not get the Asian character stamp done until next week. You can check it out here http://www.stampsmarter.com/WorldID_landing.html To see popup keyboard click on the 'Universal Search' link.
Don
APS #094826

Thanks, Don -- maybe I won't need to do anything! Or maybe my pages can go into it in a little more detail.

Both you guys are doing and will do good, important, and helpful work!