Article provided by: Hirokaz Onoda.

In 1963, Mr. Hayakawa, the current JPCA president, started a postal Chess club named “Pawn Chess Club.” It first consisted of 9 members. Mr. Hayakawa started to edit and publish a club bulletin “The Pawn” and the first CC. tournament was held, with 9 participants.

One year later, in February 1964, “The Pawn” Club was renamed “Japan Postal Chess Association” (JPCA).

In 1965 JPCA joined the ICCF. At that time, JPCA had 30 members. Japan participated in the 4th ICCF Olympiad.

In 1966 the first Correspondence Chess Championship of Japan was held. In the year 1972 JPCA started to calculate the domestic rating.

The postage rate was raised excessively in 1981. (The new postage for a card was 40 yen—in the spring of 1980, it was 20 yen, and after that, there was a short period when it was 30 yen). It affected the active CC players, about 140 people at the time, so severely that almost half of them stopped playing CC.

JPCA Open, the prize tournament for the first time, was held with 13 participants divided in two groups.

In 1994 Onoda’s book “Chess” was published and the number of members of JPCA started to increase constantly. In 1997 Japan’s delegate for ICCF was changed from Mr. Tandai to Onoda.

Now the JPCA bulletin “The Pawn”, written in Japanese, is published bi-monthly by Mr. Hayakawa, free to all members of the JPCA. The Japan CC Championship has been held almost every other year recently.