File:Genpō Tsūhō (元豊通寳) - Dr. Luke Roberts 01.png

English: Nagasaki export coins

The Tokugawa era (1600-1868) is sometimes erroneously described as the era when Japan shut itself off from the outside world and became a "closed country." The ruling Tokugawa regime greatly restricted sites of foreign trade following the 1630s and did prohibit (with certain exceptions) the travel of Japanese abroad in the interests of maintaining peace at home and abroad. Insofar as this goes Japan was partially "closed." However the volume of foreign trade did not decline, indeed it continued to grow until the early 1700s and throughout the Tokugawa period Japan maintained trading relations with just about every country within a thousand miles, and with the Dutch East India Company as well. Furthermore, Japanese coinage and bullion played an important role in the East Asian economy until the early eighteenth century. The Tokugawa clan gave rights to certain foreign trade to the following regional daimyo domains: Tsushima domain had a monopoly of the Korean trade carried out through the merchant quarter granted it in Pusan by the Korean king; Satsuma domain monopolized the Ryuukyuu trade through Kagoshima, and Matsumae domain monopolized the Ainu trade in Ezo (Hokkaido). Each of these sites were also sites of indirect trade with China--high quality silk and cloth being the main import into Japan. The Tokugawa clan itself opened up only one port for direct trade with with China and Southeast Asia and with the Dutch East India Company, and this was the city of Nagasaki. Since all other ports than the above were closed to foreign trade Nagasaki was a most important site of interface with Asia and Europe during the Tokugawa era. In the 17th century Japan was one of the great silver producers of the world. China imported silver from Japan and the Americas in great quantities, and indirectly was an economic engine for Europe and its colonies in America. Japanese mines also produced significant quantities of copper and Nagasaki's main exports were silver and copper. From the year 1659 until about1685 great amounts of copper coins were minted in Nagasaki and exported. These coins were based on locally carved mother coins but used the words of Song era Chinese coins. By far the most common is the formal script (kaishou) Genpou Tsuuhou (Yuan Feng Tong Bao) pictured above. It is easily distinguished from the Chinese Song coin because the Song coin exists mainly in seal script and semi cursive script. The Nagasaki coin nevertheless comes in an enormous variety of character shapes and sizes, which is suprising because the coins all come from one mint. I cannot think of any Kan'ei tsuuhou mint which produced anything near this variety. Below I present examples of some of the common varieties of the Nagasaki coins and attempt a typology based upon Japanese practices of distinguishing coins. This is nowhere near exhaustive; indeed contains much less than half of the common varieties. I will write the type descriptions in Japanese and in English translation. If your browser does not support Japanese characters the Japanese will appear garbled but you can safely ignore it. This is the "small, vigorous character" version of the Nagasaki coin. It is identifiable by the right bottom portion of the Gen character at the top of the coin. This portion forms an angular outside corner rises up sharply and rather high. This is a very handsome example of the coin. 遒勁小字 I have no examples but The "large, vigorous character" version is rather uncommon, and both the large and small have a rare variant. The variation is that the left leg of the Gen character is cut through at the bottom. This variant is known as the "stone kicking" variety.

All varieties of the Genpou tsuuhou coin displayed here are 24mm in width.