The earliest coins to reach Japan were Chinese Ban Liang and Wu Zhu coins, as well as the coins produced by Wang Mang during the first centuries of the first millennium AD these coins have been excavated all over Japan, but as Japan's economy was not sufficiently developed at the time, these coins were more likely to be used as precious objects rather than a means of exchange rice and cloth served as the main currencies of Japan at the time. They are examples of early Japanese minting and they are currently housed in the Japan Currency Museum. Early coinage Fuhonsen (富本銭), found in Asukaike (飛鳥池), from the end of 7th century, are made from copper and antimony. Since then however, the shell has become a symbol for money in many Chinese and Japanese ideograms. This contrasted somewhat with countries like China, where one of the most important items of commodity money came from the southern seas: shells. The main items of commodity money in Japan were arrowheads, rice grains and gold powder.
#ANCIENT JAPANESE COINS PORTABLE#
Ideally, commodity money had to be widely accepted, easily portable and storable, and easily combined and divided in order to correspond to different values. Commodity money was a great improvement over simple barter, in which commodities were simply exchanged against others. This generally consisted of material that was compact and easily transportable and had a widely recognized value. Chinese shell money, 16-8th century BC.īefore the 7th-8th centuries AD, Japan used commodity money for trading. History Commodity money The ideogram for shell ( 貝) was incorporated into the ancient character for "coin"/ "treasure" ( 寶) Hō in Japanese (right).
After the traditional usage of rice as a currency medium, Japan adopted currency systems and designs from China before developing a separate system of its own. Japanese currency has a history covering the period from the 8th century AD to the present. Kaei period Edasen ("Branch money"), the first result out of the foundry. For the modern currency, see Japanese yen. This article is about the history of currency in Japan.
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