Arbitrage, export, and recoinage

Gold Outflow from Bakumatsu Japan

Gold left Japan because treaty exchange exposed a large bullion-value mismatch; the Man’en recoinage reduced the incentive at significant domestic cost.

幕末の金流出

Obverse of a representative Man’en Koban, retaining its oval form — As6673 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · exact type representative

Reverse of a representative Man’en Koban, retaining its oval form — As6673 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · exact type representative

Core routes: 15
Issue studies: 12
Cleared image pairs: 10
Indexable routes: 27

Context

Historical and monetary setting

Silver-dollar exchange, conversion into domestic units, and gold export formed an incentive chain. Restrictions alone did not remove it, so the shogunate sharply reduced the gold content of the Koban.

Identification

How to classify the evidence

Separate mechanism, policy response, and later economic effects. Price change and political instability cannot be reduced to a single coin or decree.

Evidence boundary

What this page does not claim

No unsupported estimate of total exported gold is published.

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Related transition references

Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Coinage Foreign Silver in Japan New Currency Act of 1871 Early Meiji Gold Coinage Early Meiji Silver Coinage Early Meiji Copper and Bronze Coinage Japanese era-date guide

Evidence

Sources and scope

These links support the claims on this page. Source authority does not imply permission to republish source images.

History of Japanese Currency: Opening of the Country and Gold Outflow Bank of Japan Currency Museum

Treaty-port exchange, Mexican dollars, gold outflow, Man’en reform, transitional currency, and the 1871 decimal system.

Open source

Finance history article on the Bakumatsu gold crisis Ministry of Finance, Japan

Comparative gold-silver ratios and the Man’en Koban response.

Open source