Before email became the preferred tool of direct marketers, one of the most common ways to solicit orders or gather commercial leads was by sending large quantities of business-to-business mail through the postal system. For postal operators this was a significant source of revenue, and advertising cards, circulars, reply cards and enquiry forms were a normal part of commercial postal traffic.
This card is an example of such a system in colonial-era Korea. It is a Japanese postal stationery reply card with the “Nankō” design, showing the mounted warrior commonly known as Nankō. This type of card was issued on 1 August 1930. The present example was used in Korea and postmarked on 6 February 1934, corresponding to Shōwa 9 in the Japanese imperial dating system.
