1920s Japan Tokyo Akasaka Imperial Palace Cavalry Escort Kobundo Postcard For Sale

Title1920s Japan Tokyo Akasaka Imperial Palace Cavalry Escort Kobundo Nakamura Postcard

FrontA hand-coloured collotype view of the Akasaka Detached Palace (Akasaka Rikyū) in Tokyo, seen across the open gravelled forecourt.

Printed across the upper centre of the sky, in Japanese and Akasaka Imperial Palace.\"

The palace occupies the left and centre of the image. Built in 1909 in the Neo-Baroque manner to designs by Katayama Tōkuma, it is rendered here in pale grey stone. The long two-storey façade curves gently across the frame, articulated by rusticated ground-floor arches with pale blue-green shuttered windows, a channelled upper storey with pedimented window heads, and a heavy cornice with balustraded parapet. At the centre-left a domed pavilion with a small cupola rises above the roofline, and to the right a projecting end pavilion carries a tall pedimented gable and a large arched window.

In front of the palace a mounted escort is drawn up on the forecourt: a formation of some fifteen to twenty cavalrymen on brown horses, in dark uniforms with plumed helmets, several carrying lances with small red and white pennons. Two officers on horseback are positioned in front of the column at the right. To the left, near the palace wall, stand sentries in white and dark uniforms and a group of red-painted carriage or garden furniture.

At the right foreground stands a large open-sided motor limousine of early 1920s type, brightly tinted in scarlet with yellow lining, a pale canvas roof over an open passenger compartment with side windows, a green-painted bonnet and radiator with brass fittings, white-walled tyres and wire wheels, and a driver at the wheel. Two tall flagpole-like standards with red and white finials rise behind the car.

At the right and background are mature green trees and shrubbery enclosing the palace grounds. The sky is tinted bright blue with banked white cumulus, and the foreground is a broad expanse of pale cream gravel. The card shows corner and edge wear, chipping at the upper right, a light crease through the caption and general age toning.

BackUndivided-style back printed in blue ink on cream stock, with a single vertical rule down the centre.

Across the top centre:\"CARTE POSTALE\"

Within a rounded-square framed device at the top right, containing a stylised bird figure:\"KŌBUNDO NAKAMURA\"with the vertical Japanese characters \"日本一\" (Nihon-ichi, \"the best in Japan\") beside it.

Printed vertically in blue at the right edge:\"郵便はがき\" (Yūbin hagaki, \"post card\")

Printed vertically in blue at the left edge:\"郵便はがき\" (Yūbin hagaki)

The card is unused and unposted. There is no stamp, postmark, handwritten message, address or sender\'s inscription. The stock shows overall age toning, scattered foxing and corner wear.

Estimated EraCirca 1928–1935. The card belongs to the same \"大東京\" (Greater Tokyo) series published by Kōbundō Nakamura as the companion Nihonbashi, Ginza and Tokyo Station views, sharing an identical undivided-style back and bilingual caption format. The Akasaka Detached Palace, completed in 1909, served as the residence of the Crown Prince and later as a state guest house, and the mounted Imperial Guard escort shown here reflects its ceremonial use in the Taishō and early Shōwa years. The enclosed limousine with wire wheels and white-walled tyres is of early to mid 1920s manufacture, while the \"大東京\" designation in the caption points to issue around or shortly after the 1932 municipal expansion.

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