Gold

Ten, five, and one ryô Edo period coins on display at the British Museum.

• Japanese: 金 (kin), 黄金 (ougon)

Though used in Japan since nearly the earliest times, gold, like silver, became particularly prominent in regional maritime trade and domestic concerns in the 16th-18th centuries. Throughout the 17th century, Japan was one of the world's primary sources of copper, silver, and gold.

Gold is also used extensively in traditional arts, especially in the form of gold leaf or gold foil. Expensive handscrolls are often painted on gold-flecked paper, and lacquerwares often incorporate sprinkled flecks of gold foil, a technique known as maki-e. Gold foil is also commonly used as the backing for folding screens.

History

Muromachi Period

The export of copper, silver, or gold from China was banned by the Ming Dynasty court for much of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Towards the end of the 16th century, many daimyô or other regional powerholders began to expand mining efforts, and gold and silver began to circulate more extensively, and to be exported in greater volumes. Gold dust had long been a common element in gifts (tribute) paid by samurai lords and shogunates to the Imperial Court; bags of gold dust of a designated size, called nô (納), were valued at 20 ryô. In the central regions of the country, where mining was most prevalent, taxes came to increasingly be paid in gold and silver; this was then exchanged for coins or rice. Kin'ya and gin'ya (gold and silver dealers) emerged and enabled these conversion (exchange) transactions. These dealers, along with firms officially licensed by the local lord, called ginza or tenbinza, also dealt in producing, and certifying, pieces of gold and silver with a designated level of refinement or quality. Certified pieces, called hankin or gokuin-gin would be marked with numbers, kanji, kaô (monograms), or crests, indicating the firm's certification. The term hankin would later be used in the Edo period to refer chiefly to ôban coins, but in fact the term could be applied to all certified & marked pieces of gold.

Edo Period

Gold coins became one of the chief modes of high-value currency in the Edo period. Perhaps the most common denomination of gold currency was the koban, with a face value of 1 ryô. However, this was most commonly used and circulated in and around Edo, and the farther one traveled from Edo, the less standard it became. At the beginning of the Edo period, there were over one hundred types of gold coins in circulation. In many other parts of the archipelago, including in the Kamigata region (i.e. Kyoto and Osaka), silver valued by weight was the more common medium of exchange. While one gold ryô was ostensibly equal in value to one koku of rice, the value of gold increased dramatically over the course of the Edo period relative to that of rice, making many merchants who earned their incomes in silver and gold considerably wealthier than many samurai whose stipends were fixed to an amount of rice. That said, though stipends were officially measured in rice, samurai were often paid in a combination of rice and gold coinage.

The Tokugawa shogunate debased and revalued coinage numerous times over the course of the Edo period in response to declining supplies of precious metals or other economic trends. One notable instance of this took place in 1695, when the shogunate ordered that newly-minted gold coins be made of only 57% gold, a reduction from their previous percentage. Silver coins were reduced from 80% silver to 64% at this same time. That same year, the shogunate banned the export of gold and tightened restrictions on the export of silver. The shogunate further debased the coinage nineteen times between 1819 and 1837 alone.

A number of gold mines flourished in early modern Japan; perhaps the most famous is the Sado gold mine on Sado Island, which was controlled by the shogunate. Kaga han and Akita han also became major centers of mining. Gold mining, or panning for gold in streams and rivers, was a prominent element of Wajin (Japanese) economic activities in early modern Ezo (Hokkaido) as well. By 1669, there were seven "mining" areas in Ainu lands and two in Japanese-controlled areas of Ezo, dominated primarily by the panning for gold dust or gold pebbles rather than outright mining. Gold panning activities altered the paths of many rivers as well as polluting the waters, which had a significant negative impact upon the salmon and other river-based resources that many Ainu communities relied upon for food and for trading.

While Japan was a significant exporter of precious metals, especially silver, in the late 16th to early 18th centuries, by the mid-to-late 18th century, many of Japan's gold, silver, and copper mines were approaching exhaustion. Around the 1760s, Japan began to import gold and silver. The Nagasaki kaisho clearinghouse then began to levy taxes on these imports: 35% on gold and 7-9% on silver. The revenues from these levies went a long way to supporting the kaisho, and the people of Nagasaki, while the remainder of the gold and silver was sent to the shogunate's treasuries.

In 1779, the shogunate banned the circulation of nanryôni, pure silver coinage, switching over more exclusively to coins of gold-silver alloy, as well as copper coins. In 1820, the shogunate then granted the Kinza - its own chief bank and mint - a monopoly on the trade of gold, banning all other trading in the material.

Meiji Period

In 1897, Japan switched from a de facto silver standard to a gold standard.

References

• Crawcour, E.S. and Kozo Yamamura. "The Tokugawa Monetary System, 1787-1868." Economic Development and Cultural Change 18:4, part 1 (1970). pp489-518.
• Kobata Atsushi. "Coinage from the Kamakura Period through the Edo Period." Acta Asiatica 21 (1971). pp98-108.