Coins of Asia

The art of coinage was borrowed from China by Japan, whose first bronze coins were issued in ad 708. To the mid-10th century, 12 different issues were made, each of a different reign. For the next 600 years, however, no government coins were issued, and grain and cloth were used as money. From the Middle Ages imported Chinese coins began to circulate along with locally minted imitations. In 1624 the copper kwan-ei was first issued and remained in vast variety the usual issue for more than two centuries. The ei-raku and bun-kyū sen of the 19th century were the only other regular copper coins. Unlike China, Japan has had a gold and silver coinage since the 16th century. The gold coins are large flat pieces in the shape of rectangles with rounded corners, the largest size being ōban and the smaller koban. Other gold pieces are the small rectangular pieces of one and two bu issued from time to time; round gold is rare and usually of provincial mints. Silver was originally in the form of stamped bars called long silver; these were supplemented by small lumps, also stamped, called bean silver. They were later augmented by issues of silver pieces in the same shape as the small rectangular gold coins.

In 1869 a mint on European lines was established in Tokyo, and gold, silver (yen or dollars), and copper were regularly issued from it until World War II, when nickel and various alloys superseded the precious metals. After World War II the yen was retained as the unit of currency. The e sen of Japan are not coins but amulets.

The earliest coins found in Korea were Chinese knife coins of the 3rd century bc. The local production of coins did not begin until the 9th to 10th century ad, when copies of contemporary Chinese Kai-yuan coins were made. Coins with local inscriptions, still based on the Chinese model, were issued from the 12th century. Chinese-style coins continued to be used until Japanese and Russian influence led to the introduction of Western-style coinage in the late 19th century.

Nam Viet (present-day Vietnam) began by imitating Chinese coins and had a regular bronze coinage of its own on the Chinese model from the 10th to the 19th century. Silver became common in the 19th century in the form of narrow oblong bars. Presentation pieces in gold, silver, and copper were created in a variety of designs bearing, for example, auspicious inscriptions and quotations from the Chinese Classics, in addition to the king’s name. The native coinage continued until World War II but had largely been replaced by French colonial issues. After independence from France, Vietnam substantially retained the Western alphabet on its often very attractive coinage. Cambodia (Kampuchea) had its own coinage from the 15th century—curious uniface round pieces decorated with simple religious pictorial designs. Western-style coinage began to replace these from the mid-19th century. Separate coinages subsequently were in circulation in Cambodia and Laos, as they were in North and South Vietnam during the 1945–76 partition.

The earliest coinages of Southeast Asia were issued in Burma and Thailand during the late 1st millennium bc. They were derived from Indian prototypes (examples of them have also been found in Cambodia and Vietnam). From as early as the 17th century Thailand struck gold and silver coins in the form of balls made by doubling in the ends of a short, thick bar of silver and bearing the stamp of the reigning monarch (“bullet” coins). After about 1860 it had a coinage on European lines with issues in gold, silver, tin and copper, and later nickel.