Anniversary of Culture

A Japanese first-day cover envelope: two commemorative postage stamps sit in the upper right beside a red cancellation mark, above a typed address to Dubuque, Iowa, while a red cachet at upper left reproduces a pond-and-lily-pad scene beneath the word "HASUI." One stamp renders that same pond landscape in muted green and blue tones; the adjoining stamp is a vertical design of a woman in a patterned kimono playing a long stringed instrument outdoors, surrounded by scattered red maple leaves and columns of Japanese text. The pond landscape is Kawase Hasui's woodblock print Anniversary of Culture, of unknown date.