bryan's 58 killers ...
the IJPO joined the UPU in 1875, in hope of solving common problems of international mail seapost. at the beginning of meiji era, several nations were active in japan mails - britain, france, usa, russia and germany... mails to other european destinations were carried by packet lines of these nations. the growth of railway lines internationally also speeded the mails overland.
to 1876, the IJPO domestically were using woodcarved indicia... duplex to cancel outbound, and nijumaru receiving marks. with the start of japan's foreign mail service, things changed. the usa sold the pacific steamship company to
mitsubishi steamship - the shanghai route was growing fast. this streamlined the US service to n america and europe. the british maintained a seapost route (twice daily) to hong kong and beyond. the french service also continued until 1900s...
roman letter daters and new obliterators appeared in 1875. the first set of killers were iron cast and manufactured by a NYC firm. Bryan brought these IJPO foreign mail office, where he acted as advisor. these appear above...
historically these are important. compare each to designs in section 322 of the 2008 JPS handbook of japanese postmarks. the images below show original state. overtime, some degraded to only partial cancels. regarding the early roman letter thimbles, Bryan may have contracted these for IJPO also. I have yet to discover the source, however, they resemble more the british hong kong cancels of the time (perhaps a london firm manufactured them). ref: JP48-5
in 1875, tokio, yokohama, nagasaki, hiogo-kobe and hakodate were part of foreign mail service. by 1900, 44 japan offices had rubber-molded roman-letter daters. the JPA and IJPO offices in china and korea also moved to roman-letter daters as UPU requirement. the domestic letter botas continued to be made of wood - lasting about 6 months...
