Telephone Card Day

What Is Telephone Card Day?

Every December 23rd is "Telephone Card Day" (テレホンカードの日, Terehon Kādo no Hi) in Japan. On December 23, 1982, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT's predecessor) installed the first public telephone accepting the magnetic prepaid "Telephone Card" (テレホンカード, terehon kādo) at Sukiyabashi Park in Tokyo and began selling the cards the same day. NTT established the day to commemorate this. The card let users make public telephone calls by inserting a prepaid magnetic card rather than coins.

Why the Card Was Invented

Yellow public phones that accepted ¥100 coins had appeared in 1972, but they did not give change. Instead of developing costly change-giving phones, the corporation developed card-based public phones. The card solved several problems at once: no need to carry coins, charges deducted in 10-yen units with nothing wasted, no need to keep feeding coins during long calls, and fewer coin-collection rounds for the operator.

The Telephone Card as Cultural Phenomenon

Japan's telephone cards rapidly became collectibles as well as functional payment tools. A huge variety of card designs were issued — featuring celebrities, landscapes, anime characters, corporate mascots, and limited-edition artwork — creating a collecting hobby (テレカコレクション, tereka korekushon). Rare cards can sell for more than their face value. Issuance of magnetic cards peaked in fiscal 1995 at about 400 million cards a year, falling to about 1.3 million in fiscal 2021. The telephone card became one of the most distinctively Japanese consumer objects of the 1980s and 1990s.

Public Phones Today

Public phones still matter: in large disasters they can be easier to get through on than congested mobile networks, and emergency calls to the police (110) or fire and ambulance (119) are free from public phones. Leftover telephone cards can still be used in card-operated public phones, or applied to NTT phone bills for a handling fee.

Fun Facts

• Declining payphones: Japan once had more than 800,000 public phones; NTT's designated (Type 1) public phones had fallen to about 110,000 by 2021, with further reductions under way — a consequence of mobile phone ubiquity.