Susami, a small fishing town on the Kii Peninsula in Japan's Wakayama Prefecture, struggled towards the end of the 1990s to offer tourists a reason to stay rather than just pass by on their route to somewhere larger. With only a few thousand residents and no notable landmark to divert tourists from the major coastal route, local authorities were searching for anything unique enough to place the town on a map that largely disregarded it. The man in charge of the neighbourhood post office gave a somewhat surprising answer. As part of a local fair intended to promote the neighbouring Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, Toshihiko Matsumoto, who had worked for Japan's postal office for around forty years, suggested erecting a functional mailbox on the floor of Susami Bay. The community dropped a red postbox to a depth of around ten metres, or thirty-three feet, in 1999 with the assistance of a local dive shop, and connected it to the postal system as an officially recognised collecting site.
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