File:Jian Yan Tong Bao - Dr. Luke Roberts.jpg

This page is just for fun. It links one of my hobbies, collecting Asian (primarily Japanese) cash coins and charms, with a historical perspective. I will introduce here aspects of how the coins were made, circulated, and what they can tell us about the societies that made them. I will be building the site slowly over the next few years. (9/26/01) (last updated 10/24/03)

What are East Asian Cash Coins? Cash coins were the "pennies" of East Asia, the most common daily currency. Typically, Asian cash coins are round copper alloy coins with a square hole in the center and writing with four Chinese characters on the front. They are cast in molds rather than stamped with dies and so are unlike the coins of the West Asian and European tradition. Round copper alloy coins with a hole in the center were first created by the Zhou dynasty in present day China in the 6th century B.C. Initially the inscriptions stated the value of the coin. The T'ang began a new tradition in 621 by making the inscription read Kai Yuan Tong Bao (image above, twice normal size) which was a reference to the beginning of the dynasty rather than to the value of the coin itself. After this most coins had dynastic or calendric era name inscriptions on the front. This basic design was adopted by many dynasties and countries throughout East Asia, which existed within the boundaries of present day Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, and of course China. The design was standard over the region, as was the value--one wen in Chinese (mon in Japanese. Sometimes this value is described in English as one cash.)-- and these coins circulated relatively freely within the East Asian international economy. Officially, a thousand wen made up a guan (kan in Japanese), although local variations of this rate existed. The hole in the middle of the coin had a practical use. Money was often carried on strings rather than in purses. Frequently these strings were tied in units of 100, 300, or a thousand (the latter equalling one guan) like a roll of coins, to make counting easy. The reverse of the coins are usually blank, although many have inscriptions or ciphers identifying such things as the mint of manufacture, the year of manufacture, or--on larger sized coins-- the denomination. Coins with values of 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and even on up to 100 or 200 wen exist. A thousand thanks to people who have already made suggestions to improve these pages. Most especially I would like to thank a coin mailing list in Japan filled with friendly people who have helped correct some errors. If you can read Japanese and your computer has Japanese fonts, the superb coin page of one of their members, Adachi Noboru, is http://park12.wakwak.com/~kosenkan/. This page is the completest and best organized page for cash coins which I have found. One of the best English language pages I know of is Vladimir Belyaev's page at http://www.charm.ru/, and he has many good links on it. Also, if you can read Japanese, the web page with the best list of links to all kinds of coin pages in Japanese and all languages is Iida Kazuo's at http://www.aa.aeonnet.ne.jp/~k.iida/kazuo/coin/coinlink.html

Chinese Coins The people who lived in the land of present day China made cash coins for more than two thousand years. I think that calligraphically the most beautiful and technically the most sophisticated coins came from the Northern Song dynasty. Even the coins made of iron reveal most extraordinary craftsmanship. China has frequently been part of foreign empires, such as the Mongol, the Jin, the Liao and the Manchu who set their ruling centers in China and both contributed to and were greatly influenced by Han Chinese culture. These dynasties cast coins with legends in their own languages and scripts as well as in the Chinese language. Some of these coins are quite beautiful as well. China is today and has always been a large multi-ethnic realm. This new arrangement is my first major revision since first creating a China page in 2001. I have divided the Chinese coins into pages devoted to different dynasties. It will take me a long time to scan coins and add them to each page. My collection is very spotty and focuses on the more common coins. Below are links to the various dynasty pages with a representative coin from the dynasty. At the bottom of each coin description I have put in the Chinese characters (using Japanese code because I cannot read Chinese as such). Set the viewer to recognize Japanese encoding. If your computer does not support Japanese this will come out in gibberish but don't worry, it is not necessary origins through Sui (581-618)

Tang (618-907) and Ten States etc. (circa 900-circa 970's)

Northern Song (960-1127) Part 1 960-1067 Part 2 1068-1127

Southern Song (1127-1229)

Liao(916-1125), Western Xia(1038-1227), Jin (1115-1234), Yuan (1271-1368) 　 Ming (1368-1644)