A PHILATELIC MYSTERY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 77, 27 September 1924, Page 16

A PHILATELIC MYSTERY

JAPAN'S FIRST POSTAGE STAMP,

In the "Yuraku," a well-produced magazine devoted to stamp-collecting in Japan, Mr. Shotaro Hibata, of Tokiu. recently started a history of.the postage stamps of Japan, writes Fred J. Melville in the "Daily Telegraph." He has historical qualification for the task, being for many years in the service of the Teishinsho, or Department of Communications, and associated with the designing of Japanese stamps since 1888. Before there were any .national stamps, British postal agencies had been opened at Nagasaki and Kanagawa following upon the treaty of 1858, and at the British agencies in Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagasaki, our Hong Kong stamps were available.

The first Government postage stamps of Japan appeared on Ist March, 1871, but there is a mystery stamp which is probably of earlier date, and is attributed to a local postal service organised in Nagasaki by a British firm. So far as I am aware there is only one specimen of the samp known to collectors, and it has been in my possession for about twenty years. It is a curious label, like some of the American private locals. The device is a crude woodcut of a mounted postboy, and the inscription, "Sutherland and Co., Postage £ Boo," is printed in black on yellow paper, and perforated. The stamp is a mystery, and it was from this specimen that Messrs. Stanley Gibbons listed it in their catalogue o! "The Local Postage Stamps of the World" in 1899. The copy is a poor one: indeed, it is cut nearly in two, and all but a few of the perforations have gone. I lent it to an eminent collector in Japan to make inquiries, and Mr.. Hibata prefaces his history with it, but is not able to tell us much concerning it. He says: "There exists an adhesive which seems likely to have been issued by a foreigner in Japanese territory. . . boo or bu is equal to 1 shu, and is the name of a silver coin of old currency, being equivalent to 6i sen now. The stamp in question is said to have been issued at Na~ gasaki about 1870, and may have been used for sea post oh foreign steamers then plying between Japanese ports. Investigation was made in Nagasaki regarding Sutherland and Co., but so far ended in failure."