Tokugawa monetary system

Edo Period Coinage

Explore Tokugawa money as a connected gold, silver, and copper-or-iron system with different valuation conventions.

江戸時代の貨幣Edo-period coinage

表Exact image unavailable 裏Exact image unavailable

Core routes: 14
Issue studies: 12
Recoinage records: 21
Local status: Published

Context

Historical and monetary setting

From the early seventeenth century, Tokugawa authority coordinated declared-value gold, principally weight-valued silver, and counted cash while repeated recoinages changed metallic standards.

Identification

How to classify the object

Begin with metal branch, valuation convention, form, and named recoinage before attempting a specific issue attribution.

Evidence boundary

What this page does not claim

This phase stops before a full Bakumatsu foreign-trade and Meiji yen-transition treatment.

Valuation

Accounting and exchange relationships

Fixed gold accounting, official cross-metal conventions, and market exchange are different evidence classes.

Type	Period	Relationship	Boundary
fixed-accounting-relationship	Tokugawa period	1 ryo = 4 bu = 16 shu	This is an accounting relationship within declared-value gold, not a universal market exchange rate among all three metals.
official-convention	Early Tokugawa	1 ryo = 50 monme silver = 4,000 mon copper	The Currency Museum presents this as an early official convention; actual exchange moved with market conditions.
official-convention	Eighteenth century	1 ryo = 60 monme silver = 4,000 mon copper	An official convention used for explanation, not a promise that every transaction cleared at this rate.

Continue

Related Edo references

Tokugawa Tri-metallic Monetary System Edo Gold Coinage Edo Silver Coinage Edo Copper and Iron Cash

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 Bank of Japan Currency Museum

1601 Keicho gold and silver, 1636 Kanei Tsuho, recoinage sequence, and later denominated silver.

Open source

Money and Society in the Edo Period: Three-Currency System Bank of Japan Currency Museum

Gold, silver, and copper valuation conventions; Oban, Chogin, and Mameitagin roles.

Open source

Research on the Tokugawa Tri-metallic Monetary System Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan

Scholarly framing of fluctuating exchange among gold, silver, and copper monies.

Open source