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Temporary Currency Act · 1938–1945

Wartime Japanese Coinage

Follow sourced changes from silver and nickel to aluminum-bronze, brass, aluminum, tin, and tin-zinc, with mass reductions stored as separate specification generations.

日本の戦時貨幣

Obverse of the Showa 19 (1944) 10 Sen of Japan Reverse of the Showa 19 (1944) 10 Sen of Japan
As6673, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; deterministic crop and conversion. · Representative contextual pair
Core routes
20
Issue studies
14
Exact image pairs
15
Indexable routes
0

Context

Historical and monetary setting

Japan Mint history links the emergency system to rising currency demand and diversion of strategic materials. The official table documents repeated reductions within the same aluminum designs before 1944 tin and tin-zinc issues.

Identification

How to classify the object

A wartime date alone does not identify composition. Verify diameter, mass, hole, design, and the official specification generation.

Evidence boundary

What this page does not claim

No domestic issued iron coin is asserted. Ceramic preparations are unissued and appear only in the evidence-gated section.

Material evolution

A sequence, not one alloy for every denomination

  1. Late Meiji–TaishoGold / silver
  2. 1916–1932Bronze / cupronickel
  3. 1933–1937Nickel
  4. 1938–1940Aluminum-bronze / brass
  5. 1938–1946Aluminum
  6. 1944–1946Tin / tin-zinc
  7. 1946–1957Postwar brass / nickel / silver

Iron remains a search and evidence-correction topic: no issued domestic national iron type is verified in the controlling official tables.

SeriesYearsPrimary metalOfficial alloyStatusSourced context
jp-p6-series-1-sen-bronze1916–1938copper{"copper":95,"tin":4,"zinc":1}pre-emergency baseline
jp-p6-series-50-sen-phoenix-silver1922–1938silver{"silver":72,"copper":28}pre-emergency precious-metal issuewithdrawn before the substitute-metal sequence
jp-p6-series-1-sen-brass1938–1940copper{"copper":90,"zinc":10}wartime-circulationTemporary Currency Act material transition
jp-p6-series-5-sen-aluminum-bronze1938–1940copper{"copper":95,"aluminum":5}wartime-circulationTemporary Currency Act replacement generation
jp-p6-series-10-sen-aluminum-bronze1938–1940copper{"copper":95,"aluminum":5}wartime-circulationTemporary Currency Act replacement generation
jp-p6-series-1-sen-aluminum1938–1943aluminum{"aluminum":100}wartime-circulationmultiple official mass reductions
jp-p6-series-5-sen-aluminum1940–1943aluminum{"aluminum":100}wartime-circulationmultiple official mass reductions
jp-p6-series-10-sen-aluminum1940–1943aluminum{"aluminum":100}wartime-circulationmultiple official mass reductions
jp-p6-series-1-sen-tin-zinc1944–1945tin{"tin":50,"zinc":50}emergency-circulationlate-war substitute alloy
jp-p6-series-5-sen-tin1944–1946tin{"tin":93,"zinc":7}emergency-circulation and postwar bridgelate-war substitute alloy
jp-p6-series-10-sen-tin1944–1946tin{"tin":93,"zinc":7}emergency-circulation and postwar bridgelate-war substitute alloy

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Related Taisho–Showa references

Evidence

Sources and scope

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

Coins from the Meiji era onward Bank of Japan Currency Museum

Official specifications, first-issue years, legal-expiry dates, wartime and postwar regular types.

Open source
150 Years of the Japan Mint Japan Mint

Institutional history, Temporary Currency Act, strategic-metal substitutions, ceramic production, surrender, occupation supervision, and postwar scrap reuse.

Open source
Special exhibition object list: Japan Mint and war Japan Mint Museum

Object-level measured examples of nickel, aluminum-bronze, aluminum, tin, and tin-zinc wartime coins.

Open source