●Nathan Shiga: November 2

Just picture the common type of mailbox in your own country – mostly boxy for practical reasons of feeding on mail and of different sizes. Japan used to have a cylindrical mailbox, rather a mail post, short of two meters in height, pained in bright red, standing sporadically in town.

That mail post disappeared years ago, taken after by a one-legged boxy type, also painted red, that holds more mail and easier for the postmen to handle.

A shrine in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata, figured the good old mail post should draw more tourists sightseeing the area. The shrine, Dewa Sanzan Shrine, has an impressive history of 1400 years and its history itself attracts growing numbers of tourists. The chief priest of the shrine, T. Miyano, figured it right to install one at the gate of the shrine by the guard frame “torii”.

Mt. Dewa Sanzan was designated a Japan heritage last year and draws more tourists to the mountain and sightseeing sites in its vicinity. The city is counting on young tourists who might chance to send out images of the mail post by the shrine via SNS media like Instagram to draw more tourists. This is the first mail post to “come home” in Tohoku since 2007 when postal services were privatized.

Postmaster T. Yoshida of Tamuke Post Office says “a chic rural scenery is back again thanks to the red mail post”. “Hope it’ll help attract more people to visit our place”, he grins.

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