The first stamps issued by Japan appeared in the same year, 1871, that the Post Office and the postal service were created. The country was emerging from several centuries of self-imposed isolation and entering a period of rapid social and cultural change, generally given the shorthand term ‘westernisation’, and rapid economic growth including industrialisation.
Postal systems had existed in earlier centuries, a ‘medieval’ postman’s bell can be seen on a 1946 stamp (Stanley Gibbons catalogue reference SG436), but these posts were official government services, not available to anyone but the highest administrative cadres. Private couriers, usually in the employ of the shoguns (owners of vast estates who also exercised political control), also carried letters, possibly of the type seen in Suzuki Harunobu’s 1760s print on SG1182 of 1969.
The Post Office as a functioning institution was created by the reforming Imperial civil servant Baron Maejima Hisoka (1835-1919). The English-speaking Maejima had been sent to Britain in 1870 to study the workings of the General Post Office, and upon his return to Japan almost immediately established the Japanese postal service, and had stamps printed to frank letters (the Mon-denominated Dragons).
Japan is possibly the only country where stamps were issued, on 20 April, 1871, at the same time that an internal postal service was actually founded – the first postal route between Tokyo and Osaka commenced
