Japan's first postcards were folded in two. Issued on December 1, 1873, they were made from a single sheet folded over, and looked quite different from the postcards we know today. Why fold them at all?

At the time, Japan couldn't yet make thick Western-style paper. So thin Western paper was folded double to make it strong enough to work as a postcard. Sending one anywhere in the country cost 1 sen (a hundredth of a yen), and within the same city, half that.

Postcards themselves were born a little earlier, overseas. The world's first postcard was issued in Austria in 1869, four years before Japan's. Picture postcards, though, didn't appear in Japan until later still.

Private postcards, and the first made in Japan

In October 1900, an ordinance from the Ministry of Communications allowed postcards to be made privately, too. Postcards made this way are known as private postcards. The first picture postcards made in Japan are said to have come out that same October, almost 27 years after Japan's first postcard.

In 1902, the Ministry issued picture postcards of its own, to mark 25 years since Japan joined the Universal Postal Union.

The Russo-Japanese War, and printing photographs

What made picture postcards take off in Japan was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. Commemorative picture postcards issued for the war in 1904 are still kept at Tohoku University.

One way of printing photographs on paper is collotype. It doesn't use halftone dots, the tiny grid of dots most printing relies on, so it can bring out the fine tones of a photograph, the smooth shift from light to dark. Benrido, a printing company in Kyoto, was a pioneer during the picture postcard boom, and in 1905 it set up a collotype department.

Postcards recorded disasters as well as wars. Photo postcards showing the damage from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 are kept in museums and are now online, so you can look at them from home.

Yokohama photographs, and collections overseas

Before Japanese picture postcards existed, from the end of the Edo period into the Meiji era, photo albums were sold as souvenirs to foreigners visiting Japan. They showed landscapes and people from all over the country. Because the trade was based in Yokohama, these albums are also called "Yokohama photographs."

Japanese postcards are collected overseas, too. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has a collection of them called the Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards.

How it connects to 3rd-Party.jp

From the postcards held by the Library of Congress, Kioku Kabegami picks the ones with photos taken in Japan and uses the photo side for wallpapers. Each photo page links to the original record at the Library, and if the image came from a postcard, the "Original" line in its details says so. The address side, which we don't use, is worth a look too. On postcards from about 1907 to 1917, a line runs across the address side about a third of the way up, with space below it for a message. The words "郵便はかき" (postcard) run right to left, written はかき rather than today's はがき, without the two small marks that turn か (ka) into が (ga). On postcards printed from 1918 to 1932, the message space takes up half the address side. Museum descriptions also use the position of that line to tell roughly when a postcard was made, so if you have an old postcard at home, turn it over and see where the line falls.

Sources

• Japan's First Postcard (Japanese) ↗ (opens in a new tab)Postal Museum Japan
• History (Japanese) ↗ (opens in a new tab)Japan Post Holdings
• Photo Albums of the Late Edo and Meiji Periods (Japanese) ↗ (opens in a new tab)City of Yokohama
• Ehagaki (picture postcard) (Japanese) ↗ (opens in a new tab)Kotobank