Currency

A number of different modes of currency were used throughout Japanese history, including, in the pre-modern period, the heavy use of Chinese coins. By the Edo period, a relatively standardized system of gold and silver coinage was in place, though it experienced dramatic inflation and devaluation, among other financial crises, at times. Systems which served as precursors for a "modern" system of banks and paper currency, along with futures markets and other such economic/financial developments, emerged in the 18th-19th centuries, and beginning in the Meiji period, "modern" systems based on the Western model were established.

Edo Period

Samurai stipends in the Edo period were paid out in koku, i.e. in rice. However, gold and silver coinage was used in everyday exchanges (especially among chônin/commoners - peasants, merchants, artisans, etc.). In Edo, gold was more widely circulated, while in Kamigata (the Kyoto-Osaka area), silver was more commonly the mode of exchange.

Gold was exchanged in relatively standardized coins issued by the shogunate, including the ôban and the koban, worth different denominations of ryô. A ryô was considered to be roughly equal to one koku, which in turn is said to have been roughly the amount of rice needed to feed a man for a year. However, rice and gold prices fluctuated dramatically over the course of the period, and the exact amount of rice that comprised a koku is a subject of debate.

Silver and copper also existed in the form of coins. However, these were generally counted not by number of coins, but rather by weight, in momme. One hundred momme were worth roughly one momme of silver, and one thousand momme was called one kanme.