Stamps That Tell a Story
Philatelic tributes to soaring in Japan, along with a brief history.
This article first appeared in the January, 2003 issue of Gliding magazine. Temporal references (eg. “show today’s sport in Japan”) have been retained as originally written. — Ed.
The Japanese Post Office issued a set of four postcards in the early summer of 1988 to be used as summer greeting cards. One (see above) shows a stylised sailplane as the imprinted postage stamp and a stylised image of the Southern Wind. The Postal Ministry adopted the design of the glider to show the “cooling and refreshing image” of summer.
In Japan it is a long standing custom to write greeting cards in the summer as well as for the New Year. Since 1986, these cards have actually been ‘lottery cards’ nicknamed Kamo-Mail or Sea-Gull Mail. It is believed that this card shown did not win anything! But due to the growing popularity of this kind of lottery, in 1988, a total of 330,000,000 summer greeting cards were printed, with the one showing the glider having the smallest print run of 72,000,000. It is not known how many of these cards were actually used, but with such a large print run they should still be available, used or unused.
There is an active gliding community in Japan flying modern as well as vintage sailplanes, so it is not at all surprising to see the Japan Post use a glider in the design. The map (above, right) shows the location of the different soaring sites, with the Sekiyado Glider Port just north of Tokyo, being the home of the Japanese Soaring Association.
Yasuhiro Yama supplied one of his photos (see below) of a Duo Discus to show today’s sport in Japan.
A Brief History of Soaring in Japan
The first primary glider was flown on May 11, 1930, at the Tokorozawa Army Airfield by Bunzaburo Kataoka. It was designed and built by Testukichi Isobe. The flight lasted about five seconds and the machine with its pilot glided about 80 metres. A few months later, the first gliding club was formed in Japan.
Japanese interest in soaring grew greatly in the mid 1930s. The Japanese Government and Military asked Wolf Hirth to come to Japan to teach the secrets of the sport to the growing aviation community.
In October 1935, Wolf and two other German glider pilots, Karl Baur and Hans Stolz, arrived on the Trans-Siberian railroad with a Minimoa, a Wolf and two Grunau 8 sailplanes. A selected group of Japanese pilots was chosen to learn as much as they could from the German visitors.
In 1936, the first major gliding competitions took place, and these can be documented philatelically as well.
Several picture postcards were sponsored by the Asahi Newspaper for this All Japan First Glider Meet in September. And Japan Post authorised two pictorial postmarks (below, left).
In the spring of 1988 a plaque was dedicated at the Sekiyado Glider Port to Wolf Hirth (above, right) for his contribution to Japanese soaring. However, there seems to be no connection between the postcard being issued and this dedication. The text on the top of the plaque reads, freely translated:
In tribute to Mr Wolf Hirth. Mr Wolf Hirth was the teacher of the soaring sport in Japan. He was also one of the soaring pioneers in Germany. He came to Japan on October 2, 1935 and visited several places to lecture on the soaring theory and instructed for two and a half months. He left a deep impression with Japanese gliding people, thus contributing much to the development of the sport in Japan.
Most stamp collectors may not realise that Japan was the first country to issue a postage stamp honouring aviation, the 12 sen regular issue — the most expensive stamp in this series! — from 1877 shows a tiny balloon in the design and you can find it in the montage, above.
©2003, 2023 Simine Short
Acknowledgements
Much help for this article came from Yasuhiro Yama, Iwatsuki-City, and Ichiro Sato, the former director of the Sekiyado Glider Port.
References
- Brütting, Georg (1952). Der Segelflug erobert die Welt. 5th edition. Chapter 11: “Im Lande der aufgehenden Sonne.” Knorr & Hirth Buchverlag, München-Ulm, Germany.
- Kawakami, Hiroyuki (1998). Japanese Gliding History, 1930–1945. Model Art Company, Japan.
- Sato, Prof. Dr.-ing. Hiroshi. “Japan” in Hubert Zuerl (1941). Der Segelflug im Wettbewerb der Völker.
Resources
- Stamps That Tell a Story: The Series — Catch up on your missing instalments of this excellent, informative series of articles presented previously in the New RCSD and of which this article is the most recent part.
Simine Short is an aviation researcher and historian. She has written more than 150 articles on the history of motorless flight and is published in several countries around the world as well as the United States. She is also the editor of the Bungee Cord, the quarterly publication of the Vintage Sailplane Association. Simine is currently working on a biography of aviation and soaring pioneer Octave Chanute.
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