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Need Japanese date help
ajaan
Posts: 17,125 ✭✭✭✭✭
What is the date on this coin? Thanks.
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'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
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ajaan
Posts: 17,125 ✭✭✭✭✭
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
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Successful BSTs with: Grote15, MadMarty, Segoja,cucamongacoin,metalsman.
DPOTD-3
'Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'
CU #3245 B.N.A. #428
Don
And at the bottom, again right to left, Taisho Juni -- Taisho 12, or 1923, as stated.
It's an "issen" coin.
Dai Nippon was the old militaristic way of referring to Japan. "Dai" is a definite no-no now, and Nippon is now referred to as Nihon except in some commercial names, for example Dai Nippon Printing Company.
Hope I got that all correct.
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myEbay
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<< <i>Okey-dokey, I just dug into some of my Japanese reference books: "bu" is 1/4 of "ryo". "rin" is 1/10 of "bu". And from what I can tell "mon" seems to be another term for "sen" >>
Not quite.
By the early Meiji law which abolished the Tokugawa Shogunate's monetary system and created the rin/sen/yen, the rin was defined as being 1/10th of a sen, which was itself 1/100th of a yen, the new standard denomination.
Without going into the detail which you can read at your public library in Modern Japanese Coinage by Cummings, suffice it to say that the equivalent values were specified as 1 rin being worth one mon, and 1 yen being worth 1 ryo. 1 bu, of course, then was replaced by its equivalent 250 sen or 1/4 yen.
<< <i>Nippon is now referred to as Nihon except in some commercial names, for example Dai Nippon Printing Company.
Hope I got that all correct.
>>
Almost.
The kana character "ho" becomes "po" when a small circle is added at the upper right. Kanji characters beginning with the sound represented by that character are sometimes pronounced with an initial "H" sound, and sometimes with an initial "P" sound. I'm sure there is some rationale for which sound is used, but other than "it sounds better that way", my Beautiful Bride hasn't been able to fully explain it to me in English. The characters for the country name can be pronounced "Ni Hon" or "Ni Pon" in different contexts.
The "Dai" (or "Tai") character standing alone can have the meaning "Great", and that's the way it was used in the country name prior to the American post-WW II occupation. (That same character is the first character of "Taisho".)
<< <i>Old stuff there. Even older than me >>
If it's pre-Meiji I am absolutely clueless. After that I am barely less so.
BTW that is a nice looking coin Ajaan!
Cathy
<< <i>Okey-dokey, I just dug into some of my Japanese reference books: "bu" is 1/4 of "ryo". "rin" is 1/10 of "bu". And from what I can tell "mon" seems to be another term for "sen", and also used for weight measurements. Old stuff there. Even older than me.
. >>
"Momme" is used for weights, though the only things still weighed that way (that I know of) are pearls. The later pre-modern coinage was so debased that ichi-ryou wasn't worth nearly what it used to be. There are also rectaungular "shu" denominations along with the "bu." If you look in the reference books you'll see how the fineness of the gold coins dropped dramatically as time went on.
Obscurum per obscurius
<< <i>
<< <i>Okey-dokey, I just dug into some of my Japanese reference books: "bu" is 1/4 of "ryo". "rin" is 1/10 of "bu". And from what I can tell "mon" seems to be another term for "sen" >>
Not quite.
By the early Meiji law which abolished the Tokugawa Shogunate's monetary system and created the rin/sen/yen, the rin was defined as being 1/10th of a sen, which was itself 1/100th of a yen, the new standard denomination.
Without going into the detail which you can read at your public library in Modern Japanese Coinage by Cummings, suffice it to say that the equivalent values were specified as 1 rin being worth one mon, and 1 yen being worth 1 ryo. 1 bu, of course, then was replaced by its equivalent 250 sen or 1/4 yen. >>
With all due respect I think Modern Japanese Coinage has simplified too much. Or has not provided proper historical reference. For one thing, a "ryo" is extremely difficult to equate with one "yen" as we're dealing with quite a different age. Let's start with this, I seem to recall in my studies, admittedly a long time ago, that one ryo was equal to a certain quantity of rice. I may be wrong but I thought it was the quantity one could eat in one year.
Oh man, this is giving me a headache. I think I'd better do like the politicians do and check into the hospital for exhaustion from stress. Sorry, Mr. Nagata.
Let me see what my other books tell me, but it may take a bit.
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<< <i>
<< <i>Okey-dokey, I just dug into some of my Japanese reference books: "bu" is 1/4 of "ryo". "rin" is 1/10 of "bu". And from what I can tell "mon" seems to be another term for "sen", and also used for weight measurements. Old stuff there. Even older than me.
. >>
"Momme" is used for weights, though the only things still weighed that way (that I know of) are pearls. The later pre-modern coinage was so debased that ichi-ryou wasn't worth nearly what it used to be. There are also rectaungular "shu" denominations along with the "bu." If you look in the reference books you'll see how the fineness of the gold coins dropped dramatically as time went on. >>
And that I forgot to cover in my response -- stress again -- the gold content. So true. It dropped and dropped to the point of being so little it became a problem. But that is further "historical reference" that book should be adding to its info, if it hasn't.
On the use of "P" or "H" one point is significant: in pre-war/war days in Japan all military orders and many unit reports etc. were written in katakana only, for the benefit of the so many troopers who couldn't read all that well, and the "P" was used.
Still, we are clearly taught that "Nippon" is a reference to a "nationalistic" view and shouldn't be used anymore. Not sure if GHQ was involved in that interpretation, but that's the way I learned it.
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<< <i>Need Japanese date help >>
-Be yourself.
-Smile.
-Show interest in what she has to say.
-Pay for at least some of the date yourself!
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I looked up some of these terms in Kojien, the standard Japanese-Japanese dictionary, and Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary for some definitions of these things.
First and foremost, we need to keep in mind that these units are not exclusively monetary. They are units of account which can be used for weight, currency, or just enumerating objects. They have different values in different fields and time periods. The ryo, for example, can be a unit of weight which is divided into sub-units differently depending on whether one is measuring gereral weight, the weight of medicinal materials, gold and silver, or denominating currency.
So here is the stuff that concerns us:
In the Edo period,
one ryo of gold = 4 bu = 16 shu
one ryo of gold = 60 momme of silver
60 momme of silver = 4000 mon (copper coin)
The momme here is a unit of weight equivalent to 1/1000 of a kan (1 kan = 8.72 lbs, 3.75kg)
I am sure that the exchange rates between gold, silver, and copper were in constant flux. The Kojien simply said "in the Edo period" but that is not especially useful given how frequently these units were revalued and the varying fineness of the metals concerned.
Other things of interest:
In reference to copper cash, mon and momme are interchangable. In this case a momme is not a unit of weight but a copper coin.
From the Meiji period, yen and ryo came to have the same meaning in common parlance (not in legislation).
How does this look? I am going to look in some other sources and get back to y'all.
1 ryo = 4 bu = 16 shu = 4,000 mon
1 bu = 4 shu = 1,000 mon
1 shu = 250 mon
Thanks to a special someone who sent me their old JNDA catalogue
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I did just enough reading to know that I don't know what I am talking about.
<< <i>From the Meiji period, yen and ryo came to have the same meaning in common parlance (not in legislation). >>
Much as I respect your knowledge and research in this area, I have to ask whether you have read Report on the Adoption of the Gold Standard by Masayoshi Matsukata or History of the Yen by Hiroshi Shinjo.
If you have, what is your basis for disagreeing with this English translation of their quotation from The New Coinage Regulations:
<< <i>$. The relative value of the New Coinage and the old shall be as follows: 1 yen equals 1 rio or 1000 mon, 50 sen equals 2 bu or 500 mon, 10 sen equals 1/10 rio or 100 mon, 1 sen equals 1/100 rio or 10 mon, 1 rin eqal 1/1000 rio or 1 mon."
Starting with the relationship 1 new yen=1 old ryo, the rest of those relationships are certainly correct.
The relationships have nothing to do with the relative values of the ryo in gold, silver or copper over the years. They relate to the ryo as it existed in the third year of Meiji.
Originally there was a discontinuity between silver and gold yen, with 100 silver declared to be worth 101 gold, when Japan went on a silver standard. Then, in the Coinage Act of 1897 Japan went back on the gold standard based on 750 milligrams of gold having a value of 1 yen. By Article 7 of that act gold coins were made legal tender without limit, but silver was only legal tender up to 10 yen, and the status of nickle or bronze coins as legal tender was limited to 1 yen. The 50% reduction weight of gold coins after October 1, 1897, is explained by Article 16, which provided that gold coins already issued would circulate at double their face value.
Since I don't want this forum to become a clone of the US or Open forums, this will be my final comment in this thread.
I don't disagree with the English translation you have provided. I just posted what I found in my dictionary, which is not necessarily an authority in this area. The text said that in the Meiji period "ryo" had the same meaning as "yen." The phrase contained the adverb "zokuni," which to my understanding means something along the lines of "customarily," "according to custom" rather than by legislation.
If your English text is a translation of the monetary legislation then I will defer to it as far as the question of the exchange rate for the old and new currencies is concrened. As for the number of mon to a ryo previous to the Meiji reforms, I think I can still stand by what I wrote.
Don't disappear! We all learn from debate. It would be a shame for a good thread to come to an end for fear of a difference of opinion.