Inside Japan’s Missing Post Office Of Grief

The bucolic Awashima Island of Japan, just off Kagawa Prefecture, hides away an extraordinary, if peculiar, destination that is as deeply moving as it is strange, namely, the ‘Missing Post Office’. Here, the famous psychoanalysis theory that the letter always reaches its destination finds utterance. It’s one such post office where letters with no possible addressee find a home. The affair isn’t an official postal service but an emotional sanctuary where people shoot in handwritten epistles to those they’ve loved and lost, their future selves, estranged love or even cherished objects. Founded in 2013, the place was an art installation by Saya Kubota during the Setouchi Triennale and was housed in a wooden building that once served as Awashima’s official post office until 1991. Let us delve into this novel address and find out all that may interest a traveller.