Imperial Japan Revenue On Cover

I am very new to stamps and stumbled into Philately when I discovered these 1924 Imperial Japan revenue stamps in a Big Little Book late last year.

Thanks to some earlier translation and identification help I believe this is some sort of a cover for legal court documents. The writing indicates the origin is Nago Okinawa.


The big mystery is, why were holes so neatly punched in the stamps? I have been told by quite a few people that such was not the normal practice for these types of stamps or for the location in general. Any thoughts?

The little mystery is, why are there five Latin numerals in the top left corner "00303"?

Hello Priceknight;

I've just found your post on this Japanese revenue stamp usage. As you have mentioned, this is a part of legal court document, submitted to Nago branch office of Naha district court.

The cancellation says "Sai-Ban-Sho-Keshi-In" = "cancellation of court"; I believe that those court cancellations did not have any unified design/style, so this one from Nago branch office should have had a sort of paper punch in the centre of the cancellation to physically obliterate the revenue stamps. I've never seen such cancellation in my revenue stamp collection, and thanks for showing this !

As for the "00303", this is very likely to be the case ID or receipt ID of the document at the court.

Hope this helps.

Hironobu (unechan)