Who Can Tell Me About This Postmark, Chinese On A Japan Stamp, What Year, Month, Date And City?

Who can tell me about this postmark, Chinese on a Japan stamp, What year, month, date and city?


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

This is a standard Japanese type cancel.

It is a telegraph, money order or telephone cancel. All text in the postmark is read from right to left. In the first line is the province name. In the second line is the town name. The part below the bisect will indicate if the cancel is postal or a non-postal service offered by the post office (telegraph, telephone, money order, or ?)

Text reads top to bottom, actually. The bottom center reads post and telephone office, which I thought meant dual use for the cancel.

Top center reads 31st year (Meiji 31) = 1898. Top right is 6th month = June. Top left reads 27th day = 27th.

Someone else will have to identify the city/town which is the bottom right characters. I believe the bottom left should be the specific office name.

Correction
This is neither a telegraph, telephone nor dual use cancel.

The office type is as stated, but researching this further found that this type was used for receipting money order business/charges. So, you have a non-mail/nonpostal cancel here. Still collectible.

Hi postalpicker and all,

This is a Japanese datestamp - Bisected Circle type datestamp, vertical version (listed as"JBC-2" in Handbook of Japanese Postmarks, 2008). The structure of the datestamp is depicted in the following image .

This JBC-2 is further subcategorized into 3 (three) subtypes, and yours is the small format, "Month" type used from Meiji 27 (1894) to Meiji 36 (1903).



The date is June 27, Meiji 31 (1898). Post office is "Ecchu Fukuno postal & telegraph office", which is now Toyama prefecture, Fukuno city. This is a very nice example of a full stroke, sock-on-the-nose datestamp so please admire its beauty !!!

Further information:

The postmark JBC-2 was introduced in 1885 and was, as mentioned by other expert members, originally used for receipt of money order charges, where the postmark was applied directly onto the receipt document itself.

Since 1890, payment of money order charges by postage stamps were permitted, and since then we can find this postmark on postage stamps for obliteration.

Since 1894, this postmark was also used for postal savings. Furthermore, since March 1990 the payment of postal savings by affixing postage stamps to dedicated postal saving sheets were introduced, and this postmark was extensively used to obliterate the stamps on postal saving sheets.



Hope this helps you !

Greetings from Osaka, Japan
- unechan

Hi Unechan,
great to see you return
I soak up all your information....Thanks