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Modern Japanese Coins | Column J | Time line of Japanese Coins J

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Preface

This page introduces the Japanese modern coins, which are not valid at the moment and made by the coining process, striking the metal disk with the hard metal dies after Meiji period.

Regarding my collection, he amount is prior to the condition , so there are less coins of high grade in this site. It would be happy if this page could be useful for the beginning collector of Japanese coins.

English pages are under preparing little by little by and just a few pages are available in English at the moment. This site is originally written in Japanese and the links with suffix "J" are the pages written in Japanese.Thank you for your understanding regarding wrong or inappropriate English.

Outline of Japanese Coin History

In Edo era (Tokugawa shogunate, 1600 - 1785), Japan adopted the isolation policy from other countries except for China and Portugal. Even that, in the late period, strong western countries requested to open the country and it was done.

At that time, the value ratio of gold to silver is different from the other countries. Gold is much cheaper than other countries so foreign countries brought the silver into Japan and get gold and bring out. Japanese economy confused very much and it would be one reason why Tokugawa government ended.

After Meiji Government started in 1868 after the end of Tokugawa shogunate, Japan were still threatened by western strong countries so that Japanese Government tried to import the western systems and technologies in order to catch them up.

Before that in Edo era, Japanese coins were handicraft products made by casting and the value of coins are not stable. The credibility was not so high, in some case they sometimes reduced the containing gold in coins in order to make more money.

Regarding the currency system and coinage, Meiji government drastically changed them referring the western countries. This was also requested by other foreign countries. The government adopted a machinized mass manufacturing with stable quality using western technology and system.

A new decree of currency were promulgated in Meiji 4 (1878), which determines that old unit 1 Ryo is equal to 1 Yen, 1 Yen is equal to 1.5g of gold or 100 Sen or 1,000 Rin. The specification of all issued coins, such as the size, weight and compositions were also settled and stipulated in the decree.

Japanese Modern Coins

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Date : 15 Apr 2022

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