Hisashi Kimura (1870–1943) was a Japanese astronomer and geodesist whose life’s work was on the motion of the Earth’s poles of rotation. The main component of polar motion is an oscillation with a period of about 14 months called the Chandler wobble, but there is in addition a smaller yearly variation established by Kimura in 1902 known as the z-term which is caused by the seasonal displacement of air and water masses on the Earth. This stamp depicting Kimura was released in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Mizusawa Latitude Observatory, of which he was first director (1899–1941). 

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