Please Help To Identify Japanese Revenues & Documents 1890's?

Great to see you respond to this thread, Unechan.
We can all benefit from material rarely seen around stamp forums.
I watch with interest.

Hi Hironobu,

Thank you for your replies.

I am pleased that you find my postings interesting. For me, joining this stamp community has been a great source of learning, especially as the above revenues they have been in my 'pending file' for many years, waiting for a day like this. Thank you for offering to sharing your knowledge on these issues.

Your informative replies will be of great interest to fellow collectors and to beginners like me.

I've found the Hasegawa catalogue on ebay and will order a copy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SB5T-New-J...AOSw1KxXNZEP

I just hope that the language barrier does not hold me back.


Andrew

Hi Andrew and all,

The new issue of the Japanese revenue catalogue by Mr Hasegawa. Available on ebay.



https://m.ebay.com/itm/SB5J-New-Jap...57Ciid%253A1

-Hironobu

Apologies for not noticing your post on Hasegawa catalogue; that's exactly the same seller.

The notable changes from the former version by Furuya is the updated information on plate categorization; a large portion has been amended, including a total resetting of the previously proposed plating list for 1 sen black revenues.

So I now have to rewrite a lot of my album pages...

- Hironobu

It would be interesting to see if the catalogue shows all plate layouts of the 1873 hand engraved stamps?

Andrew

Andrew,

the catalogue shows the number of confirmed plates and some characteristics of each plate if available. No pictures of full sheet or reconstructed sheet; in fact, I understand that full sheet is extremely seldom, and plating has been completed on only a limited number of plates of some limited issues. Identification of different plates seems to be still in progress.

For example, In the previous version Furuya has proposed some 40+ different plates for first series 1 sen black, but in the latest version Hasegawa proposed to "reset" all the results by Furuya so most of the information on plate identification has been deleted now.

- Hironobu

Hironobu

Thanks for the clarification on the plates.

Andrew

I fold the document (very carefully of course) so that

- the revenue stamps,
- type of document (I.e. loan, bill, voucher etc.),
- value declared on the document if necessary, and
- date of document

are displayed.

I add detailed scanned image on the page to describe etching varieties / errors and plate characteristics if any.




- Hironobu

For mounting the document I use Hawid clear 55mm strips (210mm length if I remember correctly).

The difficult thing about these documents are they are generally written on very thin native (Japanese) paper, and to secure them onto the album page the conventional corner mounts (used for covers etc) are sometimes not sufficient. And also the thickness of the document could be significantly increased by folding, and this also raises problem with securing the document onto the page.

The only problem is that one have to use a whole bunch of those mounts, which could be quite costly...

Another solution might be to put the document in clear plastic cover and then mount them using corner mounts.

- Hironobu

Nice work Hironobu,
really enjoy your posts....

Hi rod222,

Thank you so much for your kind words; it is also a privilege for me to have this opportunity to share my collection (accumulation) and experience on these revenues and back-of-book items, which indeed do lack information on Web (even in Japanese)...

Apart from the philatelic interest, I find these old handwritten documents also very attractive because of the beauty of the calligraphy itself.

More to come soon

- Hironobu

About the franking of revenue stamps on documents. As far as I know there's no information compiling the transitions of the franking system available. The franking depends on the type of documents (i.e. loan, recruitment agreement, bills, notes, voucher etc.) and also on the valuation declared on the document. Not so complicated, fortunately for the period of hand engraved revenue stamps.

Some document types are required to have a uniform franking of 1 Sen (thus so many documents with single 1 sen black revenues are present). Some types, such as loan documents and vouchers, an additional 1 Sen franking was required for every 10 Yen declaration; for example, the document (loan document) on my former album page has a declaration of 56 Yen and (???) Sen, thus required 5 sen franking in total.

The marvelous document with three 50 Sen green revenue posted by Andrew is a loan document for 1500 Yen, thus requiring 1500 / 10 = 150 Sen franking in total, which matches the revenue stamps attached.

The franking system is announced in proclamations and are often summarized as handy references during these days. Digital images of these documents are available from the National Diet Library Digital Collections, Japan. Here's an example of the handbook from Meiji 13 (1880), entitled "How-To Reference of Using Documentary Revenues: 25 Rules"

http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/790549

And another example: the Meiji 7 (1874) proclamation on the amendment of revenue stamps and its utilization system, announcing the color changes of several high value revenue stamps and new issue of 5 Yen and 20 Yen revenue stamps

http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/...14?viewMode=

Now comes another problem... they are so hard to read (even for modern Japanese guy like me)

- Hironobu

Hironobu.

Thank you for sharing one of your written up display pages. Its truly breathtaking and it has left me wondering why I am attempting to study these hand engraved revenue stamps on documents. But as we all know, philatelists do like a challenge even with the lack of published research documentation and the different language we try our best to overcome these problems...

On the folding of documents for display purposes does one fold along the original folds or re-fold the documents in order to try and show the revenue stamps, type of document etc depending on your album page size?

I was wondering about the rates on these documents and your postings may have helped to solve this problem for me at the moment.

Andrew

I try to use the original folds whenever possible, but mostly have to refold to show all the necessary information and to fit into the album page. I believe avoiding any additional fold is of paramount importance, but for the purpose of displaying the data some minimal alteration of the original condition may be permitted... something like opened cover.

In some cases with a significant number of revenue stamps attached, I sometimes have to work thing out in a rather odd manner...



- Hironobu

Wow! what a document, most impressive thanks for clarifying the folding of such documents to maximise display potential.

Andrew