Japan

I am really struggling with Japanese postcards to find the correct category and I have a feeling that many others may be experiencing the same problem.

I had a card of Mount Fuji today.

"googled" it to see if I could find a territory/province/prefecture that would correspond to any of the Delcampe categories. Failing that I searched on Delcampe for it. I checked about 10 cards - all of them were listed in Japan other or unclassified.

My geography of Japan is non existent, but maybe there is somewhere out there who could clarify the various Delcampe categories?

I list a lot of Japanese postcards and here are my thoughts and experiences. Most go in 'Other' as they are smaller cities/towns. I also put 'occupation' cards (views of 'wine seller' 'farmer' 'cooking a meal') in 'Other'. If the image is some type of artist image (not a photo or scene of a town) I have had luck selling them in 'Illustrator and Photographers-->Other' category. If appropriate, 'Royalty' is another category I use for Imperial family and Emperor cards. I also list some Japanese event cards in the 'Exhibition' category.
The other important aspect of listing Japanese --or really any other card-- is using key words in the description -- Department Store, Street Car, Auto, Geisha, Amusement Park, Zoo, Ainu,etc.
I list 'Okinawa' in the description but otherwise don't mention the prefecture or island. Don't know if this would help but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't.
There is a Japanese dealer here in Seattle who translates captions for me. His stock is divided by city name, not prefecture or island and I assume he knows what Japanese collectors want. [for example, I have had California buyers tell me they won't look at a dealers stock if it's not categorized by County as they collect by county not necessarily city/town and 'don't have time' to look for all the towns if your stock is alphabetized by town!]
Finally, less than half of my sales of Japanese postcards go to Japan; there are probably less than 6 repeat Japanese customers for me on Delcampe. The UK, Germany and US are bigger markets here for me so I tend to use their needs when listing. Perhaps I'm missing opportunities but a seller can only know so much about each category in a hobby such as ours.

I've found Wikipedia to be a great source of geographic & political division information when categorizing cards. The state, prefecture, county, or province in which even the smallest German, French, and British towns are located is easily found on Wiki.

Mt Fuji, for example, was a cinch in terms of prefectures and towns - took a minute to locate:

"Mount Fuji is a distinctive feature of the geography of Japan. It stands 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft) high and is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, just west of Tokyo. It straddles the boundary of Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Three small cities surround it: Gotemba to the east, Fujiyoshida to the north, and Fujinomiya to the southwest"

Link (http)

It was when I started listing on Delcampe over 5 yrs ago that I found I needed this detailed information because the categories are more finely set here than the coarse categories on eBay for postcards.

I figured if I wanted my listings to be seen, I'd best get them as close as possible in the right sub category. Trouble is it can be time-consuming. I start reading the Wiki entries and forget to get on with listing!

cheers, Brent

Whoops! Ok, I see the problem - a few major cities and no prefecture classification to deal with smaller towns or locations. Time for a revision of Japan's sub categories.

Almost as bad as eBay's postcard categories for the UK - London, no other cities, a few key counties, and Wales & Scotland! One wonders what the folks who did that categorization were thinking!

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But, of course, that's the fun of collecting (if not, selling) - serendipity leads you to places you never even thought of visiting!

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I had assumed that the categories were "districts", as well as major towns. I shall stop wasting my time searching for the correct category for Japanese cards. If the actual city name doesn't appear in the title, it will go in "other".

As far as the other comments are concerned. I am another one who every now and again gets lost in Wikipedia or sometimes elsewhere on the web, when researching cards. It's very easy to lose half an hour or so, when searching for a particular town/personality/artist/battle/etc.

And if OH is at home, he often gets drawn into it. It will start with a comment from me like "this is fascinating" or "I never knew..." and off we go.