Memorial Tribute to Suzuki Yasushi (鈴木康嗣)

I lived in Osaka, Japan, for three years in the mid to late 1970s, spanning my middle- and high-school years. In truth, it was there that I learned most of what I know about stamp collecting. At the time, the economic gap between Korea and Japan was enormous, and the scale of the Japanese philatelic market, the size of its collecting population, and the qualitative level of its infrastructure were simply incomparable. Even now, it is difficult to shake the sense of astonishment I felt then.

After returning home and entering university, I sought to improve the Japanese I had learned and to obtain new Japanese stamp issues, so I made two Japanese pen pals. In 1982, I saw an advertisement from the Japan Philatelic Association announcing the publication of the Catalogue of Korean Stamps (1983 edition). I asked one of my Japanese pen pals to buy a copy and send it to me by post, and the catalogue quickly came into my hands. My name was written inside the book, but at the time I paid little attention to who had written it.

Then, just last year, I happened to look again at the name written in that old catalogue—was it not Suzuki Yasushi, the president of the Korea Stamp Study Group? Back in the 1970s and 1980s I had no idea who this famous person was, yet in recent years we had come to interact quite actively. The reason was that the pen pal whom I had asked to send me the book had obtained Suzuki’s signature at the JAPEX exhibition—he was the very editor of that catalogue—and passed it on to me. When I scanned the signature last year and sent it to Mr. Suzuki, he confirmed that it was indeed his. I remember how delighted he was, saying that it seemed like a strange, fateful connection. Just as I had been unaware at the time, he too had simply thought he was signing a book for some young Korean collector, never imagining that he would one day come to know that person personally. Such is the nature of human ties.

In the 1970s he was selected by Mizuhara Meisō (水原明窓), then president of the Japan Philatelic Association, and went on to produce a Korean stamp catalogue in Japan with remarkable speed. He later created introductory albums for Korean stamps, which were sold until the early and mid-2000s. The fact that albums for Korean stamps were marketed alongside those for the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany is evidence that there were quite a number of collectors of Korean stamps in Japan at the time. At the same time, as a third-generation Zainichi Korean who had taken Japanese nationality, this was also a result of the interest and affection he maintained for his ancestral homeland.

He maintained deep ties with the late Kim Seung-je and with Eun Jong-ho, former president of the Korea Postal Stationery Society, and made major contributions to the growth and development of the Korean and Japanese philatelic worlds. However, he had never published an article in our journal, and I wanted somehow to draw out his knowledge and expertise. With a thoroughly otaku-like dedication, he often pursued points that our own collectors had not even considered, and he made significant contributions to the compilation of the Specialized Catalogue of Korean Stamps. For that reason, I felt his knowledge had to be shared with our readers through the journal, and we decided to publish his articles and contributions frequently. As a result, over the past two or three years his writings appeared in our magazine from time to time.

But on February 5 I received the sad news that he had passed away. He was only seventy-four. We cannot choose the moment of our departure from this world, yet it feels that he left us far too soon. Since we began our active exchanges, both of us had thought that everything was only just beginning, expecting that he would provide much inspiration to our philatelic community. Instead, we are faced with the painful moment in which that relationship has suddenly come to an end.

I offer this modest memorial tribute before his spirit.