Japanese Postmarks - Anything Interesting Here?

As a postmark enthusiast, I find it almost impossible to resist buying lots of stamps because one or two feature postmarks I've taken a liking to. Even if they're not in Roman script.

Unfortunately, I cannot read Japanese, so need help with these.

For those you can, is there anything interesting among them?

Hi jimjamtwo, nice assortment of different cancels - here's my observations.

Most of the postmarks are comb type datestamps, which is fairly common. There are also non-postal usage, with three stars (last stamp, 1st row) or Japanese characters (hiragana) (second stamp of last row) instead of time zone in the bottom part.

One interesting example is the one with horizontal bars instead of vertical bars - the third stamp, Tazawa 4 Sen, of third row, which was used in Taiwan. Also note the "." in front of "4" in the date - I believe this is a mistake by the postal clerk, who used the ".4" (e.g. April) instead of "4" to be used for date :-)

There is one older style, e.g. the "bisected circle type datestamp" on the first stamp of 2nd row (20 Sen Kiku). This is also fairly common.

The first stamp of 1st row (5 Sen UPU Koban) and the third stamp of the 1st row (2 Sen UPU Koban) bear the so-called "vertical type, bisected type datestamp", used for non-postal purpose such as postal money order and postal savings. The one on the 5 Sen stamp is nice, crisp socked-on-the-nose cancel from Kisarazu postal and telegraph office. The one on the 2 Sen is from Hamada postal and telegraph office. These two cancellations are of different types, e.g. the order of date inscription on the top (from right to left) is Year-Month-Day" for the 2 Sen, and is "Month-Year-Day" for the 5 Sen. The former type (called as "Year" type) was used from around 1890 to 1894, and switched to the latter type ("Month" type), used until around 1903.

Again, I think this is a nice assortment for Japanese postmarks from late 1800s to pre-WWII era. Please enjoy!

- Hironobu

Thanks, Hironbu, for your informative response.

I was also most taken by the cancel sporting horizontal bars. Would you know where in Taiwan it was used?