France and Japan issue joint stamps

On October 30, the French and Japanese postal administrations issued a joint set of stamps to mark Letter Writing Week, featuring two designs depicting two representative gardens from each country: the Vaux-le-Vicomte castle with its French-style gardens and the Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pagoda) temple near Kyoto. The French postal administration issued two miniature sheets (10 stamps each), while the Japanese postal administration issued a miniature sheet of five pairs of stamps.

Stamp set sample

The art of gardening is considered a representation of a worldview , reflecting the cultural identity of each nation. Ginkaku-ji Garden – part of a temple built by shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa during the Muromachi period (1336–1573) – embodies the spirit of Zen Buddhism: minimalism, successive layers of space, the combination of concealment and disclosure, between emptiness – solidity – vegetation – water. The beauty of the garden is felt through the silence and serenity, evoking meditation. In 1994, Ginkaku-ji was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The gardens at Vaux-le-Vicomte represent the French landscape architectural tradition, which emphasizes rationality and order. The landscape is organized in a strict geometric way, with trimmed shrubs, terraces, ponds, and spatial axes arranged to demonstrate the power of humans to organize and shape nature. Instead of blending with the landscape, the architecture here plays the role of the dominant subject.

Source: https://vietnampost.vn/vi/tem-buu-chinh-/phap-va-nhat-ban-phat-hanh-bo-tem-chung