Need Help Identifying Japanese Postmark On Zeppelin Postcard

Any help with a translation of this arrival mark would be greatly appreciated. I'm particularly wondering what the numbers "4.8.21" stand for.

Its the date... year, month,day. The 4 would indicate 1929

Please show a scan of the entire mail piece.

Scotzm:

Does the "4" correspond to the 4th year of Hirohito's reign?

Yes...1926 was year 1 as there was a new emperor so year 4 is 1929.

4.8.21 would be 21st August 1929

Here is the front of the cover. Hopefully, someone can provide a translation of the symbols in the mark itself (above).

Neeskins,

Is there any chance you could post a higher res scan of the kanji characters?

This cover seems a bit off to me. The standard back stamp that was applied to all cards and covers received in Tokyo from this leg of the Round The World flight was a circular August 19, 1929 one with English wording Tokyo around the top and Japan around the bottom.

This is 600 dpi -- best I can do.

Kimo:

I have another cover that flew on the Friedrichshafen-Tokyo leg that was sent to an address in Osaka. That cover does not show the Tokyo stamp you mentioned, but rather is backstamped with an Osaka arrival mark. I am hoping that the mark on this cover is related to the addressee in Yokohama.

Neeskens,

I think your image is being shrunk massively on upload. Any chance you could e-mail the original scan to me? postmaster -at- my website address.

I can read a little Japanese, and I might be able to piece together the text of the cancel. I'm afraid I don't read it well enough to decipher the blurrier characters, unfortunately.

Will do ASAP.

Well that didn't work. The forum strips out the kanji characters. Let me put something together in photos and try again in a few.

Let's try this again.

The arrival cancel is the address. Good thing you posted the front of the card, cause I wouldn't have been able to figure it out otherwise.

A note on Japanese addresses -- because they don't typically use a street numbering system, their addresses usually list the prefecture, city or district, town, neighborhood, and house number.

As I break this down individually, note that the words and characters are in reverse order, as Japanese is written right to left.

Top Line --

-- city

-- Yokohama (the city)

-- prefecture

-- Kanagawa (the prefecture)

Bottom Line --

-- 405

-- Miyata (the neighborhood)

-- town

-- Kikuna (the town)

Putting it all together --


Kanagawa prefecture, Yokohama city, Kikuna town, Miyata 405

Postmaster,
Thank you for taking the time to help resolve this.
Don

Thanks, Jed. You're the best!