Could Anyone Provide A Japanese Translation Please?

Hi folks,

Another cover to show from my destination collection, posted from The Exchange Sydney to Hiogo Japan:







With Unechan's excellent tutorial here https://goscf.com/t/58797 I have managed to decipher the dates in the last two scans. Could someone please confirm that the postmarks in these scans are from Nagasaki and Hiogo respectively?

Also, could anyone please provide a translation of the 3rd scan?

Any help and information is very much appreciated

The red stamp says "To Kobe"; Kobe is the capital of Hyogo Prefecture (Hiogo is an old-fashioned and less accurate romanization, like Tokio instead of Tokyo). The first of the circular postmarks is indeed from Nagasaki, the second is from Kobe. The name of the city is the second line in each of these postmarks. I'm guessing that the top line is the specific post office, but I can't make out either one.

As you've undoubtedly already determined, the date on the Nagasaki postmark is 27 Sept. 1899 (Meiji 32), as on the Nagasaki postmark in English. The date on the Kobe postmark is 29 Sept.

Thank you so much erilaz

Dear Bobby and erliaz,




The top line is the name of the province, i.e. the administrative divisions of the modern prefectures. It is literally called as "Old Country Name" in Japanese. I personally do use often this map of provinces from Wikimedia, which lists all the provinces in Japanese and their pronunciations in english;

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...japanese.gif

The second row is the post office. The third row, right after the horizontal line is the year/month, the forth row the day, and the last row (if present) denotes the delivery (which may vary from once a day to as many as 19 deliveries a day!) Be aware that, in those days, people wrote from right to left (as opposed to the present way).

(Bobby, I am pleased to hear that you've managed to figure out the dates !!! )

So the datestamp (Maru-Ichi type, literally meaning Bisected circle type) of Nagasaki would read as;

Hizen / Nagasaki / Meiji 32 September / 27th / "To" delivery (7th delivery)

and the Kobe would read as ;

Settsu / Kobe / Meiji 32 September / 29th / "Chi" delivery (8th delivery)

- Hironobu

Popp & Co, appear to be furniture manufacturers of Queensland.
Chest of drawers, Chiffoniers etc

Many thanks to Hironobu and Rod - wonderful information

Thanks, Hironobu, for the information and the map!

So the deliveries are coded by katakana in i-ro-ha order?

erilaz, you're right; they are coded by Katakana in i-ro-ha order for post offices having more than two deliveries.

The delivery row (the bottom row) of the datestamp may be blank for;

- small post offices with only one delivery per day,
- post offices which do not deliver (i.e. only collection and acceptance of postal items), or
- non-postal usage such as postal savings, postal money order, etc.

P.S. To be more precise, the "delivery" code should be considered as "collection" or "receipt" code for the post office of origin.

-Hironobu

Thank you! I don't really collect Japanese covers (unless they're topically interesting picture postcards or Esperanto-related), but I'm always happy to learn more about Japan.