This gold coin of an unusual shape has been the basis of the Japanese monetary system for the long 265 years of the Tokugawa shogunate.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the talented military leader and skillful politician Tokugawa Ieyasu founded a new dynasty of shoguns in Japan. This dynasty actually ruled the Land of the Rising Sun, although the emperor continued to be the formal head of Japan. It is clear that a single monetary unit was also required for a single state.
Big and small
The economy of medieval Japan until then was largely dependent on rice. The standard unit of measure for rice was koku, which roughly equaled enough rice to feed one person for a year. The peasants paid taxes to the feudal lords with rice. And those annually supplied to the shogun's treasury a certain amount of rice koku.
But the Portuguese, who began to visit Japan in the middle of the 16th century, preferred not rice as a unit of account, but full-weight gold coins. And the Japanese feudal lords quickly realized the advantage of precious metals.
Tokugawa Ieyasu's predecessor and rival, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, seized large amounts of gold and silver, taking control of the entire country. It was he who began minting gold and silver coins. And Tokugawa Ieyasu continued the work he had begun. This is how the oban gold coin was born, which, as a rule, was not used for everyday transactions. She was not actually paid at all, but was used for awards and gifts. The inscription on the obverse indicated its value at -10 ryo. Ryo is a measure of weight used exclusively for gold and equals 15 grams. But here it was used only formally. Although Oban weighed 165 grams, considering the fineness, it still contained less than 10 ryos of pure gold. Yet the Oban, 17 centimeters long and 10 centimeters wide, was considered one of the largest gold coins in the world.
Tokugawa decided to create a monetary system that would be based on three types of coins: gold, silver and copper. Equal value was set for all Japanese gold coins. However, the same "rice" principle was taken as a basis. A new gold coin called "koban" ("small size") was equal to three koku. At the same time, the koban was equal to 1/10 of the oban, or one ryo, although there was, again, less than 15 grams of pure gold in it. The main silver momme coin did not have a standard form and was fixed exclusively by weight - 3.75 grams of silver. Copper coins were called monas.
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Minting with the quality mark
In 1600, immediately after the victory in the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu formally established the "Golden Mint" ("Kinza") and the "Silver Mint" ("Ginza"). Under the Tokugawa shogunate, the number of gold and silver coins in circulation was adjusted by the government about eight times.
The increase in the money supply inevitably led to inflation, and then "Kinza" and "Ginza" began to mint coins with a high gold content. Such coins were called "shotoku koban" and "kyoho koban". With their appearance, the amount of money in circulation was sharply reduced, since the shogunate government set the face value of newly minted coins twice as high as the previous ones, that is, two old ones were demanded for one new koban. This slowed down the pace of economic activity and provided deflation.
Coins were produced at mints as follows. The gold bars were first heated in a fire to make them soft. Then, using hammers, they were turned into thin oblong plates (the so-called "bu sao"). These plates were cut into pieces of equal size and weight. They were tapped with a special hammer and burned. This was the rough shape of the Japanese coin.
At the next stage, the koban was sent to the final minting, with the help of which all irregularities were removed, and the final shape was given to the coin. The coins were polished with sand and painted with various chemicals. Then they were fired again and washed, first in salt, and then in fresh water. After that, the gold color of the coin became very bright. When the minting was completed, all coins were checked against the accepted shape and weight. Each coin had a stamp that confirmed its authenticity and compliance with all standards.
After the Meiji restoration in 1868, a new monetary system based on the European model was introduced in Japan, and the old coins, including the koban, were withdrawn from circulation.
Anton Sorokin