I love discovering stories that show humanity. In a world where we seem to be more and more devoid of feelings and where our lives are dictated by computers, social media, impersonal bots and the various Alexa and Siri, it is refreshing and hopeful to see that people still care. Japan is a country of great contradictions, and yet I believe that its almost religious attention to the past and traditions is an emotional life vest to hang on to and treasure. Here is a telling story, partially drawn from the Washington Post:
On a remote Japanese island home to about 150 people, there are two post offices. Only one, however, delivers mail to the living. The other, closed for thirty years, is now called the Drifting Post Office. It is an archive that holds more than 60,000 letters, greeting cards, and New Year’s messages sent from every corner of Japan to unaddressed recipients. Lost friends, missing pets, past or future versions of themselves, but above all, people who are no longer with us. It is the place where messages of grief, nostalgia, and hope that have nowhere else to go end up.
The post office is on Awashima, one of the thousands of small islands in southern Japan. Until the 1990s, Awashima had an active port, and most of the inhabitants worked as sailors. The post office was the only connection with those at sea. When the office was closed in 1991 and the services transferred, the building was abandoned,
In 2013, artist Saya Kubota reopened the post office for a month during the Setouchi Triennial. Visitors could send letters to the office or write and read messages on site. The initiative attracted more than 31,000 people and collected approximately 400 letters in just a few weeks. After the exhibition ended, the building was slated for demolition, but Katsuhisa Nakata, the former postmaster and owner of the house, decided to keep the project alive.
He reached an agreement with the artist and began a renovation. Born in Awashima, Nakata began working at the post office at eighteen, after being barred from a career as a sailor because he was colorblind. He continued for 45 years, 17 of which were as postmaster. Today, at ninety, he still enthusiastically manages the abandoned Post Office, which opens every Saturday.
Letters are delivered by the postal service, and Nakata reads and records them. “All of life’s emotions converge here: the saddest moments and the happiest. Our job is to receive them and give them the recognition they deserve,” he says. Every week, visitors come from all over Japan to read and write letters, which are then stored in boxes accessible to everyone. For them, the office is a space where they can share intimate and universal emotions.
During Obon, the festival of the dead, lunches, gatherings, and ceremonies are organised to be with them. In recent years, with the rapidly ageing population, the number of places that collect letters for those who are no longer with us has increased, as a form of mourning.
The Drifting Post Office receives between ten and twenty letters every day, almost always anonymous. Some write to their past selves or to a more fulfilled future self. Others turn to objects they miss: a beloved toy, a beloved, a much-desired camera. Nakata now recognises some regular senders. Among the stories he remembers best are that of an elderly woman who, for years, wrote to her boyfriend who died in the war as a kamikaze, and that of a grandmother who sent two letters a month to her grandson Yuta, who also passed away. Then, suddenly, the latter’s letters stopped arriving. “Maybe she’s finally found some peace,” says Nakata. “Grief, with time, changes shape.”
Awashima’s missing post office shows us that even as places change, the spirit of community adapts, finds new ways to seek connections. The letters tell stories and, perhaps, suggest to the readers thoughts and words, to express their own innermost feelings.
