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money more rapidly, and transmit even the smallest sums by means of the post, the telegraph money order and the postal voucher (bon de poste) were issued in 1885. The limit to the amount of a postal order differs according to the categories, the charges payable also differ according to the category of the money order.

The international service for postal orders was inaugurated in 1880, as a result of an arrangement between the General Director of Posts of Japan and of the General Director of Posts at Hongkong. Some years after, arrangements relative to the interchange of postal orders were successively concluded with Great Britain, France, United States, Italy, and Canada.

In 1885 Japan adopted the arrangements concerning the international postal order service, the contracting countries with which Japan actually interchanged postal orders according to this arrangement being Germany, Austro-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Roumania, and Switzerland. For the other countries the interchange was made through the intermediary of the Postal Administration of Great Britain and that of Hongkong.

During the first year of the introduction of the postal order service, the service being limited to the important towns of the Empire, the number of offices and of postal agencies authorized to issue and to pay postal orders was only 272, and the number of postal orders issued 115,703, the total value being 5,310,365 francs; but this service has developed annually; the expansion corresponding to the increase of that of the letter post. The number of bureaus and agencies had risen at the end of the fiscal year 1898 to 3,407, and the number of orders issued to 6,338,456, representing a total value of 140,502,449 francs. This increase was due to the fact that the Postal Administration introduced the service not only into nearly all the offices in the interior of Japan and Formosa, but also to the establishment of offices in China and Corea. The international postal order service installed primarily in 1880 in the offices of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Hakodate, was introduced in 1885 to 120 new Offices.

In 1892 all the offices supplied with the inland postal order service were admitted to participate in the international service, except the branch offices and those bureaus established in Corea and at Shanghai. This last bureau nevertheless was authorized to transact postal order service with the United States of America.

Since the introduction of the international service in 1880 the yearly issue of postal orders has fluctuated, while the