The iconic "floating" torii gate of Itsukushima Shrine glows vermilion against a silver sea in this hand-tinted linen-era postcard from Miyajima, one of Japan's three views of superlative beauty — and it was mailed in August 1948, just three years into the Allied occupation, by a traveler named Geneva who had spent a grand summer in the Orient and passed through China before arriving in Japan. The view is taken from inside the covered shrine galleries, whose lacquered red pillars and sweeping eaves frame the great O-torii standing in the tidal flats of Hiroshima Bay. Geneva writes to a friend named Ruth with warm curiosity, noting she thought of her while in China and wondered exactly where Ruth had been stationed during her own year there — a tantalizing hint at wartime or early postwar service. The card carries a 10-sen Japanese Government Railways stamp and a clear Tokyo dispatch cancel dated August 1948.