Japan

October 2025 News

by Richard Zimmermann

First of all, we have to thank Kenneth Sequeira, Dubai, who discovered a China PR-Indonesia joint issue from August 30, 2025, that we completely missed. This twin issue celebrates the 75th anniversary of relationship between both countries and is illustrated with landscapes of lakes and pagodas: the West Lake with Jingzi Tempel in Hangzhou, China PR and Lake Bratan with the Pura Ulun Danu Beratan, Hindu tempel in Bali, Indonesia.

The Bosnia Herzegovina (Bosnia) – Indonesia joint issue was finally relased on October 3, 2025. This issue was originally scheduled to be released on October 4, 2024, but was finally postponed by more than one year. The stamps issued in miniature sheets of two se-tenant stamps represent the Istiklal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Istiklal Mosque in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The Indonesian souvenir sheet is available perforated and imperforate. The word “Istiklal” in Arabic stands for ‘Independence’. The Jakarta Mosque was opened in 1978. The Sarajevo Mosque was a gift from the Indonesian people and Government of Indonesia for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a token of solidarity and friendship between the two nations. This Mosque was opened in 2001 (Information provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Dubai)

On October 7, 2025, France and Japan celebrated the Week of Letter Writing with a twin issue depicting gardens. On one side the French Vaux-le-Vicomte castle and gardens were represented, on the other one, the Gingaku-ji tempel or Silver Pavilion near Kyoto, Japan, was shown. France issued the stamps in two miniature sheets of 10, while Japan produced a single miniature sheet with 5 se-tenant pairs. Mixed official first day documents and a mixed folder with all four stamps, mint, became also available (This information was first provided by Dominique Josse, France).

Mongolia and India celebrated on October 14, 2025, the 70th anniversary of their diplomatic relationship with identical souvenir sheets containing two stamps showing the Mongolian Biyelgee dance and the Ramlila theatrical performance (India). The margins show both national flags, the anniversary logo, national animals (horse and elephant), folk arts, Mongolian ger (yurt) and the blue sky (information provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Dubai, and Robert Schrijvers, Mongolia).

China (PR) and Monaco are celebrating the 30 years of diplomatic relations (1995-2025) on October 15, 2025, with two stamps showing identical flowers, i.e., Canterbury bells, Campanula medium and an orchid, Cymbidium.

The Cat stamps related to the Laos – Russia joint issue from October 15, 2025, were presented in the previous page. Kenneth Sequeira was able to provide the illustration from Laos which is producing both perforated and imperforate stamps and souvenir sheets. The stamps show the Marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) and the East Siberian lynx (Lynx lynx wrangeli). Russian stamps are self-adhesive, sold in miniature sheets of 4 pairs, chessboard ordered. Laos stamps are available as perforated or imperforate souvenir sheets containing the pair of stamps.

The Gibraltar – Liechtenstein issue announced for December 2025 will in fact be released on November 10, 2025. It design is already available on the Liechtenstein postal administration web site (information provided by Kenneth Sequeira). Surprisingly this issue will be available in form of two souvenir sheets containing each a stamp from each country (different stamp designs), which defines this issue as Se-tenant joint issue [S2]. Stamps show falcons and are dedicated to the migration of these birds. Stamps are also available in sheetlets, and mixed FDCs are available.

Catalogues Vol 1 and Vol 16 have been updated with all this information covering the months of September and October 2025.

Arab Post Day update and more to come

by Richard Zimmermann

Both previous blog pages triggered attention from collectors and resulted in additional information that help complete the catalogue:

Regarding the Arab Postal Day issue [T20250803], two additional countries have to be added to the already reported list (Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates) namely, Egypt and Oman which issued their stamps respectively on August 3, 2025 and August 10, 2025 (Information provided by Mohamed Achour Ali Ahmed, Algeria and Ali Allawati, Oman).

The 80th Arab League anniversary issue from March 22, 2025 [T20250322] was also completed by two stamps issued in miniature sheets of 3 pairs from the United Arab Emirates. These stamps were issued on August 18, 2025 (Information provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore).

The previous blog page was also missing the image of the Russian stamp jointly issued with North Korea on August 15, 2025. Illustration was provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore, confirming the twin character.

I also made a comment earlier that embroided stamps are never used postally. Henri Aronis (France) provided a proof that this can happen with a Swiss stamp (year 2000), although not part of a joint issue. As expected, the thickness of the ‘stamp’ makes cancellation illegible. This cover was sent from Switzerland to Niger. Thanks Henri.

Jaap Sarelse (the Netherlands) reacted on the comments provided earlier about the July 5, 2025 Cape Verde – Portugal joint issue and at the same time provided information about Angola, a third country joining this issue, with the following:

“The text suggests that it is a joint issue in which only Cape Verde and Portugal are involved. However, Angola is also involved with an identical stamp. Not to commemorate Angolan independence, but purely focused on the independence of Cape Verde. Some evidence:

  • In the leaflet of the Portuguese Post (6 pages) the text on page 5, 7th and 8th line from the bottom reads: ‘To help consolidate the historic memory of the founding of the Republic of Cabo Verde, a joint stamp issue is being released by Angola, Cabo Verde and Portugal’.
  • On page 5, one can find the stamps of Angola on the top row. Cabo Verde is also mentioned on this stamp at the bottom right.
  • Finally, only Cabo Verde is mentioned in the logo on page 1. I suspect that in the context of ’50 anos Independência Nacional’ Angola will get its own joint issue and that the name Angola will then adorn below the stars in the logo“

Thanks, Jaap for this complement. Catalogue will be updated. Here are the additional illustrations (Angola stamp illustrations provided by Kenneth Sequeira):

Additional information relative to issues to come include the following:

  • The Oman – Russia originally scheduled for April 22, 2025, is now postponed to September 26, 2025 (Oman source) or October 15, 2025 (Russian source), not clear at this stage. It will show maps and honour Omani explorer Ahmed bin Majid and the Russian traveler Afanasy Nikitin
  • Kenneth Sequeira reported also two modifications in the Russian philatelic programme for 2025: a) the RCC stamps will be issued on August 23, 2025, but over the past years these stamps involving all CIS countries were not anymore considered as joint and there is no hint that this will change this year; b) the anniversary of the liberation of Korea will be celebrated by overprinting the August 15, 2025 joint issue with North Korea. These stamps will be issued on September 2, 2025
  • On October 7, 2025, the France – Japan is also confirmed. Japan stamp designs became available (information provided by Dominique Josse, France)

  • On August 15, 2025, Argentina issued a stamp to celebrate 60 years of immigration from Korea. No stamps related to the same topic was seen so far in the South Korea philatelic program. This issue may remain unilateral (information provided by Enzo Cafaro, Italy)

  • Our friend Luis Alejandro Malanco Reyes (Mexico) is working on a Mexican stamp catalogue (which of course includes also joint issues involving Mexico) and brought on line the first part of his work (years 2001-2025) with free access: Catálogo Filatélico México . Congratulations Luis and keep doing the good job.

Finally, some information about the next joint crypto-stamps issue (not recommanded to include in the joint issue collection as explained earlier): This will be the fourth crypto joint issue after the 2022 Austria-Netherlands (Ox), 2023 Austria-Luxembourg-Netherlands (Lion) and 2024 Austria-Belgium-Luxembourg-Netherlands (dragon) issues. The theme for this fourth issue is the Greek world of the gods. Five countries will participate and they made the following choice: Portugal – Poseidon, Austria – Zeus and Hera (2 stamps), Belgium – Athena, Luxembourg – Artemis and the Netherlands – Hermes.

Jaap Sarelse has succesfully created joint stamp covers with the previous crypto stamps and will try again this year with the six stamps. He provided the picture of the copy from year 2024. Such documents are close to unique.

The catalogue was update with all above new data. See updated Vol 1, Vol 15 and Vol 16

UPU 150th anniversary

by Richard Zimmermann

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations and facilitates a uniform worldwide postal system. It comprises 192 member states and is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland. It was established on October 9, 1874, exactly 150 years ago.

Since more than one year, we know that this anniversary will be celebrated with a stamp which common design was proposed by UPU. In the past, the 75th (1949) UPU anniversary was celebrated, but in a non-coordinated way, mainly by colonial entities (British, Dutch and French – D19490704, D19491001, D19491010, D19491018) and the 100th (1974) anniversary with stamps that remained different for all participating countries (N19741009). The same situation happened in 1999, with absence of concertation for the 125th anniversary celebration (N19991009). Eventually, so far, only the 145th anniversary in 2019 (T20191009b) could be considered as a Twin issue.

During this year of 2024, a very large number of countries are participating. In the strict sense, this has to be considered as a true joint issue, even if there was no real cooperation between countries, but a proposal of a design accepted by most of them and translated in a locally adapted stamp, for a large part of them issued at the anniversary date. It is not an Omnibus series, as Omnibus is defined by a central printing, not by the large number of participating countries. The 2024 stamps will be reported in the catalogue as a Twin issue under [T20241009]. It is easily understandable that some joint issues collectors do not integrate such large series in their collection, in the same way Europa-CEPT stamps are not acceptable for them. Each individual collector has to decide on the basis of the following.

In the catalogue, the countries will be divided in subgroups:

  • A: the countries which take the exact original design proposed by UPU and issue the stamp(s) on October 9, 2024 (or actually around this date, plus or minus a week, roughly between October 1 and October 17, 2024), according to the definition of a twin issue [T]
  • B: the countries which take the exact original design but issue the stamp at a different date. It should not be surprising if some countries may issue their stamp in 2025 or even 2026. This is the equivalent of a Concerted issue [C]
  • C: the countries which use only a part of the design, actually integrating only the “150” logo and add some other illustrations. This logo can appear within the stamp, or on the margin of a souvenir sheet or within a label. Those stamps are also considered as twin or concerted issues of Type [T2] or [C2]
  • D: the countries which use a completely different design, but still issue their stamp(s) around October 9, 2024. This is the equivalent of a Parallel issue [P]. In this case, the original logo may appear on the stamp, but at a size that remains smaller than the half of the surface of the stamp
  • E: finally the countries that do not want to stick to design and date, and work on their own, just referring to the UPU anniversary. These countries are simply listed, without details, as they cannot be considered as joint [N].

We will have again to take care of stamps that are created by agencies that are producing stamps for certain countries but which have been given the freedom to issue stamps without a real control from the reference countries. These stamps are easily recognized by the number of stamps issued in a series and they are produced to fool collectors. In order to better identify these stamps and because they remain real stamps but never reach the originating country, they will be reported in the catalogue, but in italics. In the same way, some other stamps such as the French stamp with a full common logo are of private origin (personalized stamp) that cannot be considered as part of this joint issue either. This will be true for any other privately produced stamp from other countries, if any, and also described in italic characters.

The countries for which we already have information are reported below. If a date between brackets is missing behind the country name, this means that this stamp(s) was issued on October 9, 2024. If the content of the brackets remains empty, this means that the exact issue date is not known yet. A large number of images were provided by Enzo Cafaro (Italy). The following list is of course not yet complete.

Countries of type A (Twin [T1]): Algeria – Andorra (French) (October 10) – Andorra (Spanish) – Armenia – Bangladesh – Belarus – Bosnia Herzegovina (Bosnia) – Brazil – China (PR) – Croatia – Cyprus – Dominican Republic – Greece – Guernsey – India – Indonesia – Ivory Coast – Jordan – Latvia – Lithuania (October 4) – Mauritius – Moldova – Myanmar – Paraguay – Peru – Romania – Sri Lanka – Thailand – Turkmenistan (October 8) – Ukraine – United Arab Emirates

Countries of type B (Concerted [C1]): Argentina (August 28) – Azerbaijan (February 1) – Burundi (September) – Central Africa (September) – Djibouti (September) – Georgia (June 1) – Guinea (September) – Guinea-Bissau (September) – Liberia (September) – Mali (September) – Monaco (May 30) – Mongolia (September 25) – Sierra Leone (September) – Togo (September)

Countries of type C (Twin or concerted [T2] or [C2]): Bosnia (Serbia) – Egypt () – France (October 14) – Hong Kong – Hungary (July 24) – Isle of Man (August 30) – Japan – Kyrgyzstan (October) – Luxembourg (September 10) – Macau – Malaysia – Morocco – Pakistan – Portugal – San Marino – Saudi Arabia () – Singapore – Slovenia – Spain – Syria – Tunisia – Türkiye – Uruguay – Uzbekistan () – Vietnam

Countries of type D (Parallel issue [P]): Australia (October 1) – Austria (October 4) – Brunei Darussalam () – Bulgaria – Czech Republic – French Polynesia – Germany (October 10) – Macedonia (North) – Mexico – Montenegro – Qatar () – Russia – Slovakia – Switzerland (September 5) – Tajikistan (May) – Vatican (September 16) – Wallis and Futuna

Countries of type E (not considered as joint): Belgium (June 10) – Serbia (May 25) – United Nations – Geneva (May 30) – United Nations – New York (May 30) – United Nations – Vienna (May 30).

So far, 86 countries are listed above to which one has to add 2 postal authorities that have issued stamps that cannot be considered as joint (Type E – United Nations offices are not taken in account as countries, UPU being a sub-unit of the United Nations). The UPU counts presently 192 members, which means information from 106 countries (!) is missing. Obviously there will be an update of this page. A great help is needed here to recover information from other participating countries. We are also missing better quality images for stamps from Ivory Coast and Ukraine. Thanks a lot in advance for providing name of missing countries, exact dates of issue, and when possible illustrations, printing runs, sizes of panels and by-product lists.

The catalogue pages should be updated within the next week.

Mid Summer 2024 update

by Richard Zimmermann

On August 8, 2024, the ten ASEAN countries decided again to issue jointly stamps (previous ASEAN joint issue goes back to 2019). Don Birschel (USA) provided the images of the first released ASEAN stamps and featuring general post offices. So far, the following country stamp images became available: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The four other countries, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines are also supposed to have participated, but information is still missing at this stage.

Ali Ahmed Med Achour (Algeria) provided the following information: On the sidelines of the 45th session of the Permanent Arab Postal Commission held on July 18, 2024 at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League in Cairo (Egypt), the Commission responsible for choosing the design of the “Unified Arab Stamp” dedicated to Gaza delivered its verdict. The model presented by Jordan will illustrate this stamp to be released this year. No specific issue date was lilinked to the issue so far. The countries that participated in this competition included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine and Qatar.

The title of this issue will be “Solidarity with Gaza”. Its issue will coincide with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People established by the United Nations. It is generally held on November 29 of each year to mark the anniversary of Resolution 181, which is the Partition Plan for Palestine.
The 2024 philatelic program published at the beginning of the year by the Algerian postal administration has already selected this date of November 29, 2024 for the release of this joint issue. The list of countries that will participate to this issue is not known, but probably at least all countries having participated to the design competition will release a stamp. This issue will definitely become a twin omnibus series. The picture of the winning design is provided below.

The Grenada – South Korea joint stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of relationship were issued as scheduled on August 1, 2024. The identical pairs of stamp show the Marryshow House in St George’s, Grenada and the Jibokjae Hall (library) at Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul, South Korea. Se-tenant stamps were released in miniature sheets of 8 pairs, chessboard ordered.

The China (PR) – Russia joint issue scheduled for August 4, 2024 (pandas) will in fact be released on August 24, 2024.

The Japan – Turkey joint issue scheduled for August 8, 2024 was released on that date in form of a single stamp for Turkey and a miniature sheet for Japan, with different designs.

All these new data have been integrated in the catalogue. Vol 1 and Vol 15 have been updated.

Random News – July 2024

by Richard Zimmermann

Over the past couple of months, some friends and collectors did send new information related either to older issues, but interesting for completing the catalogue, or related to some new joint issues to be released before end of the year. Particular thanks to Enzo Cafaro (Italy), Wayne Chen (USA), Mario Moni (Italy) and Adam Paish (UK).

The Taiwan Palau issue from June 26, 2018 consisted in a souvenir sheet including two stamps showing sharks and turtle. Wayne Chen discovered a black print of the Taiwan item that has now been added in the catalogue as well (Volume 13).

The very large 150th UPU anniversary issue continues to grow in terms of announced participating countries. Even if the common date of issue will be October 9, 2024, some countries have already released their stamps, based on the model proposed by the UPU: Azerbaijan (February 1) – Georgia (June 1) . Among the other countries having confirmed their participation, we already can include Belarus – Belgium – Bosnia Herzegovina (Bosnia) – Central Africa – Croatia – Czech Republic – Djibouti – Germany – Greece – Guernsey – Guinea-Bissau – Hong Kong – Hungary – Latvia – Liberia – Lithuania – Moldova – Monaco – Portugal – Sierra Leone – Slovakia – Slovenia – Togo and Tunisia, but probably almost a hundred different countries could participate to this omnibus series. Here some first pictures.

The design of the Japan miniature sheet of 10 different stamps to become available on August 8, 2024, jointly with Turkey, has been released. As this issue celebrating the 100th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between both countries appears also in the Turkish philatelic program, it is expected that Turkey will maintain stamps at this occasion in their next issues even if design is not yet available. Actually, knowing the way Japan did handle joint issues in the past, it is not expected that Turkey will produce a similar souvenir sheet, but the country could simply pick one or two designs from this sheet to produce their stamps.

Next issue to come, the 2024 Euromed issue, topic Mediterranean sports, to be officially released on July 10, 2024. This issue is now confirmed for Bosnia Herzegovina (Serbia) – France – Portugal – Tunisia and Turkey, but probably another dozen of countries will join by that time.

Our friend Mario Moni (Italiy) inquired about some missing Italian Territorial Issues listed in catalogue Volume 2. Taking as an example the issue D19301204 (Volume 2, page 136), he pointed the absence of Aegean Islands, while this same postal administration is included in other described issues. Indeed, and after a carefull cheking, the Aegean Islands were missing in this series, but also in other series such as D19310507. The catalogue was updated of course. The same question was addressed regarding the 1925 Holy Year series (Italy issued stamps on December 24, 1924), but in this case the situation is a little bit more complicated.

In fact, the catalogue should be reshuffled by keeping only the true joint issues, but this is a huge work. It will not be easy to do and some collectors will not be happy with the decision of removing all territorial issues. For the time being, these issues will continue to be part of the catalogue, but still following the rules that had been defined in Volume I:

  • Normally, overprinted issues, i.e., colonial or territorial overprinted issues, are not joint issues, and not reported in the catalogue, except if the color of the territorial issue differs from the main country stamps
  • This is the case for the two Aegean series listed above (D19301204 and D19310507), but the 1924/1925 Holy Year stamps are simply overprinted Italian stamps with the same stamp colors. This is the reason why they are not reported in the catalogue
  • However, a note has been added in the catalogue and this series was filed as N19250601 (non-approved joint issue) with a limited description to avoid further questions on this specific topic

Probably, there are still some other Italian territorial issues that are missing in the catalogue. Do not hesitate to come back with some new suggestions. Here, illustrations of some of the new additions.

2002 Japan joint issue revisited

by Richard Zimmermann

For few months now, there is a discussion going on if the stamps issued in 2002 by India Post and Japan Post with the title “50th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between India and Japan” is really a joint issue or not. 

Our friend Souvik Ghatak (India) filed an application to India Post under the Right to information (RTI) act of 2005. He asked them, to confirm the joint issue status and to provide a copy of memorandum of understanding signed between both postal departments.

Indian Post provided the following information about the issue presently referenced in the catalogue under [P20020412a]: 1) This is not a joint issue and 2) since it was not a joint issue they could not provide a copy of memorandum of understanding between India Post and Japan Post (see copy of answer below). 

Thank Souvik for providing this information confirming this is not a joint issue. As a consequence, it will also apply to all other stamps issued on April 12, 2002 by Japan Post and involving Bangladesh [P20020411], Pakistan [P20020412a] and Sri Lanka [P20020412c].

Actually, in the catalogue, these issues appear already with the mention ‘controversial’ and the classification PX, which stands for doubtful. Accordingly, the wording in the catalogue will be modified and eventually these series will be switched from PX to N section. The stamps will remain described in the catalogue as numerous collector do own them already, but as for all the ‘N’ (non-accepted) joint issues, the collectors have to decide if they want to keep them within their Joint issue collection. The catalogue will just tell them the real status of these issues, which will now respectively be [N20020411] for Bangladesh-Japan, [N20020412a] for India – Japan, [N20020412b] for Japan – Pakistan and [N20020412c] for Japan – Sri Lanka.

Joint celebrations of diplomatic relationship does not necessarily mean that the stamps issued at this occasion are joint. The joint character comes from the will of both administrations to work together on a specific topic. Administrations define date of issue and design. However, even if discussions have started, administrations may finally decide that they will not issue the stamps jointly, resulting in absence of common stamps, no exchange of products, no common joint FDCs, etc. even if the topic remains the same.

There are several countries issuing regularly diplomatic relationship stamps without any connection with the other country. Brazil for example, is issuing several times a year, stamps related to other countries and very seldomly transforms them in a joint issue. These isolated stamps are not even to be considered as unilateral issue, as this vocabulary applies only in the case production of stamps eventually failed for any reason on one side.

Japan 2002 questionable Joint Issue

by Richard Zimmermann

Upeka Indeewary from India did ask: “The joint issue catalogue describes a joint issue from the year 2002 involving Japan and four other countries, namely India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. It appears that in Japan this issue is not considered as joint. Can you clarify? “

Indeed this joint issue could be considered as questionable. In the catalogue Vol 8, it is already described under four different entries [P20020411 and P20020412a-c]. While Japan issued all stamps the same day, April 12, 2002, the four other countries’ stamps from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan were released with 1 to 14 days interval..

None of these countries claim a joint character, and indeed we also had some questions regarding the true status of this issue. This is the reason why these issues are filed in a category called [PX] and the catalogue uses specifically the word ‘controversial’ to describe them (See also in Catalogue Vol I for the definition of [PX]).

It happens some time that even in case of same data and same design, stamps were issued by two countries with one denying the joint issue status. In fact, in almost all these cases, and this Japanese stamps probably included, a first contact between the authorities took place and topic as well as day of issue were agreed. But during the process, it came to a disagreement and finally each country decided to pursue on its own. For this reason, considering at least the situation of starting the collaboration, we report such stamps in the catalogue.

Obviously, it was not per chance that all four countries came together with Japan and launched almost at the same date each a stamp with the same topic (not the same design) also appearing on the Japanese stamps (relationship). We leave to the collector to decide if such items have to be include or not in their own collection. If these stamps are not described in the catalogue, other collectors would ask why such series are not reported. The [PX] status became the alternative. In any case, present or not in the catalogue, questions would arise. It is possible to definitely state about these Japanese stamps, if someone can bring the real story behind the creation of these stamps.

Can someone help here?

France-Japan 2021 mixed FDC

by Richard Zimmermann

Dominique Josse (France) succeeded in something that was considered as quite impossible: creating a mixed first day cover with the stamps from both France and Japan issued on October 8, 2021 (week of letter writing, mail boxes [T20211008]). In France, access to first day cancellations remains possible about 8 weeks following the official first day date, but Japan does not allow production of items with dates different than the one of the day on which it is cancelled. In other words, Japan first day covers could be obtained only on October 8, 2021, while French cancellations from October 8, 2021 remained possible until around December 8, 2021. Additionally, in this specific case, and in contrary to usual joint issue first days, there was no common joint issue ceremony, no exchange of post staff for this day and therefore no creation of official common joint first day covers. So, Dominique, managed to have access to a few Japanese official first day covers, without cachet, and, when received in France, added the French stamps before asking to the French post to cancel these stamps. Here is the result, magnificent item and quite rare. No idea if other collectors have tried as well and succeeded. To our knowledge, and so far, the number of existing samples must remain below 10. Congratulations Dominique!