What was furyo yūbin (俘虜郵便)?
— a censored postcard, and the line between what may and may not be written
Meaning
Furyo yūbin was the mail permitted to prisoners for correspondence with their families.
The form was fixed and it was censored. What could be written was decided in advance — so the card was not paper for saying what you wanted to say, but paper for saying what you were allowed to say.
How it worked
- A fixed form — a set card, a set length.
- Censorship — contents were inspected; anything objectionable did not arrive.
- Slow — delivery took a long time, and replies longer still.
Writing inside the frame
A fixed form and a censor mean that the reader, too, needs a method. What is on the card is not necessarily what the writer wanted to say. What is missing carries just as much weight.
Even so, people looked for ways to get through within the frame they were given. Reading the restriction along with the words is how these fragments must be read.
Fragments where this word appears
(Fragments for this term will be added here.)
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