The Woman Who Brought Currency To Japan

Surprising facts about Japan’s oldest currency

On this day in history, August 29th 708CE, the very first copper coins began their production in Japan. Up until this point, Japan had used rice as a means of barter and had no official currency system of their own. It was an empress, not an emperor, who began bringing Japan into the modern era with her order to begin minting these iconic coins.

The empress, Genmei, was the fourth woman to hold the throne in Japan. Women in power was nothing new to the Japanese and it would continue to be a part of their political history. In fact, Genmei would abdicate her throne in favor of her daughter at the end of her reign.

The empress ruled over what is now know as the Wado Period in Japan. This was a period of small innovation and modernization in Japan fueled by the discovery and mining of copper. Before this, Japan had few metal resources of their own and importing such things from China and Korea was difficult.

With the discovery and interest in Japanese copper, things began to change.

One of the first things that was done with the new copper mined in Japan was to begin minting their own coins. Up until that point, there had been no official currency for Japan. China had their own currency which was sometimes used in Japan but overall a barter system based on rice and other staple crops was still in effect.

There had been discussions about adopting a currency similar to that in use by the neighboring Chinese but without a solid source of metal, it was not possible to implement.

If 708 sounds late for the rise of currency, that is because it is. Some currencies, such as the English pound, have been around in some form since 1200BCE, almost 2000 years before the minting of the first copper coins in Japan.

The coin design is an iconic one that is still associated with Japan today. A rough circular coin hewed from metal, such as copper, with a…

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