🌎 Country

Japan

📅 Year

1871

💰 Denomination

48 mon

📮 Issue type

Definitive

🖼 Topic

Allegory & Mythology

Japan's first stamps appeared in April 1871, the year Baron Maeshima founded the national post after studying the British system in London. The set of four showed a pair of dragons facing a central column of value characters printed in black, and the values were in mon, a unit the yen had already replaced; a yen-denominated version followed in 1872.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain