Japan – hand-etched issues

Issues of Japan, 1871-76, were engraved on copper sheet (and not copper plate).

Most of these have been forged that were also engraved. Those were for inclusion in tourist sheets, collections of stamps mounted on printed sheets that were sold as souvenirs, that may also have included genuine stamps and postal stationery cut squares. As such, forgeries are far more plentiful than genuine stamps. Details on detecting forgeries will be included down the road.

 File:Japan 200m dragon.jpg|1871 200 mon value File:Japan 1sen dragon.jpg|1872 1 sen value 
 * In 1871, the first Dragon issue was released, three imperf values in a square frame with dragons flanking the denomination. These were on thin laid paper without gum.
 * In 1872, three new Dragons were issued, now denominated in sen, in various perfs, again on thin laid paper without gum.


 * In 1872-73, four new designs in several values were issued, now with values expressed bilingually. The royal chrysanthemum emblem, a key to identify earlier Japanese stamps is paced at top center with Yuubin kitte.png ("postage stamp") inscribed below that. In 1874, two values were issued on foreign wove paper. Stamps continued to be a range of perfs. These were the first of the issues know as the Cherry Blossom series.
 * In 1874, small simple katakana characters were added to two previous and two new designs, called "syllabics" or "kana", that correspond to plate numbers. (more on syllabics to follow)
 * Also in 1874, new colors were issued, again with kana. The kana "numbering" was reset to start with plate one for these new colors.
 * In 1875, new colors and six new designs were issued. This time, the kana plate numbering did not reset back to one for the previous color issue.
 * In 1875, a 1 sen brown and 2 sen green were issued without kana.
 * In 1875-76, modified designs of three values were issued without kana.



General notes on forgeries
A quick detection method is to see if the stamp is on piece with writing on the paper. It is nonsensical to think these were cut from improvised envelopes with writing that would make reading an address impossible. These were obviously removed from tourist sheets and if a stamp is from one of the hand-etched series, it is definitely a fake. The problem comes when these have been removed from their backing paper, common enough. However, most such forgeries have two tiny characters in two different wordings buried in the design that indicate a forgery.

Anything scarce to rare has been forged by others to bilk collectors. Genuineness can sometimes be hard to detect by descriptive references since every design in each genuine sheet of 20 is slightly different. And there are exceptions to the forgery reference guidelines where some genuine stamps can easily be mistaken for forged. The only foolproof method of detection is comparison against photographs of full sheets of 20 of each stamp, which do exist.

(more to follow)