Japan's Postal & Mail Culture

About this book

Every country has a post office. Japan turned it into a civilisation. Japan's Postal & Mail Culture is the complete guide to 200 subjects of that system — the foot couriers who outran the shogun's highways, the red pillar box and the summit office on Mount Fuji, the dragon stamps of 1871 and the shaped form cards you can only buy in one prefecture, the deliverer's dawn round and the night trucks, and the formal letter with its seasonal openings and condolence rules — in one uniform format, every entry giving History & Setting, Form, System & Making, People, Practice & Meaning, and Visiting, Using & Care, each entry written in full at 200+ words.

Maejima Hisoka, whose face still rides the one-yen stamp. The underwater post box twelve metres down off Susami. The scenic postmark that stamps a tiny landscape in ink. The drifting post office that keeps letters addressed to the dead. The absence slip, the forwarding year, the chain of signatures on registered mail. A front chapter teaches you to read any post office in four checks — counter, box, paper and round — and Part 5 teaches you to write the Japanese letter itself, from haikei to keigu.

Current stamps and postcards are described, never reproduced, because their designs belong to their makers. There are no photographs: the system is taught in words, for the eye and the hand. Fees, hours, collection times and prices are never asserted; every entry asks you to confirm them on the official channel.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.