Ryukyuan mon


The Ryukyuan mon was the currency of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1454 to 1879, when the kingdom was annexed by the Empire of Japan and the currency was replaced by the Japanese yen. The Chinese character for mon is, which was widely used in the Chinese-character cultural sphere, e.g. Chinese wén, Vietnamese văn, and Korean mun. The Ryukyuans produced their own coins until the 15th century, but became dependent on Chinese coins until the 19th century when they briefly minted their own coins again. From 1862 the minting was outsourced to Kagoshima City, Satsuma Domain and were based on the Japanese mon. All of the Kagoshima-minted coins bear the phrase "Ryūkyū Tsūhō" ; this phrase was written in Seal script on the half shu coin. Despite the annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879, these coins continued to circulate within Okinawa Prefecture well into the 1880s as the Ryukyuans were initially unwilling to use Japanese yen coins.

History

The first Ryukyuan coins to circulate were the Taise Tsūhō in 1454 under the reign of King Shō Taikyū; the second were the Sekō Tsūhō which were first minted in 1461 under the reign of King Shō Toku. Though the Taise Tsūhō are considered the oldest Ryukyuan coins, there are possibilities that an older version of the Chūzan Tsūhō was cast between 1321 and 1395 by the Kingdom of Chūzan, though these possible coins should not be confused with a later Chūzan Tsūhō cast under King Shō Kō. Both the Taise Tsūhō and Sekō Tsūhō were modelled after the Ming dynasty Eiraku Tsūhō, a coin manufactured en masse for foreign trade. Because copper shrinks when it cools, the Sekō Tsūhō was smaller than the Chinese Eiraku Tsūhō. The Sekō Tsūhō was originally cast to make up for a shortage of currency often attributed to reckless politics and high government expenditure, such as the expensive invasion of Kikai Island by King Shō Toku in the 1460s.
Coins issued by the Ryukyu Kingdom:
InscriptionKyūjitaiShinjitaiKingDynastyImage
Taise Tsūhō大世通寳大世通宝Shō TaikyūFirst Shō
Sekō Tsūhō世高通寳世高通宝Shō TokuFirst Shō
Kin'en Sehō金圓世寳金円世宝Shō EnSecond Shō
Chūzan Tsūhō中山通寳中山通宝Shō KōSecond Shō

Despite the small size of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the coins from this era are not uncommon and have been known to be regularly found on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra due to the international nature of these coins and the success of Ryukyuan maritime trade. After the issuance of the Kin'en Sehō in 1470, the Ryukyu Kingdom stopped manufacturing their own mon coins and imported Chinese currency as the main medium of exchange.
As no official records exist of the production of these coins it is sometimes taken into doubt that these coins were actually produced by the Ryukyu Kingdom.

Denominations after 1862

100 mon (琉球通寳 – 當百)

The 100 mon Ryūkyū Tsūhō coin was an ellipse-shaped coin modeled after the Japanese Tenpō Tsūhō coin of the same denomination. Like the Tenpō Tsūhō, its face value was placed at 100 mon but its weight was merely 6 to 7 times that of a 1 mon coin. Despite this, Satsuma Domain ordered that it would circulate at the value of 124 mon, which made it a profitable coin to manufacture, but this made the coin unpopular in circulation.
The 100 mon was first manufactured by the government of Satsuma in Kagoshima City from 1862 for circulation within the Ryukyu Islands as well as in the Satsuma Domain itself, but started to circulate in Japan's other provinces soon after their production. Coins minted in Kagoshima bear the mark of the katakana character "sa" on the left and right flat edges of the observe, which signifies that the coin is from Satsuma Domain.

Half Shu (琉球通寳 – 半朱)

The half Shu denomination was a round coin with a square hole introduced alongside the 100 mon by Satsuma, which ordered it to circulate at the value of 248 mon despite it weighing only 10 to 12 times the weight of a single mon coin. The word Shu is a Japanese unit of measurement used with gold currency, indicating that the Satsuma government was trying to fix the exchange rate between the copper mon coins and gold currency such as the Koban. Officially, one half Shu would mean 32 coins would have the value of one Ryō, though this conversion rate seems unlikely to have occurred in practice. The production of these coins was set up by Daimyō Shimazu Nariakira in order to rebuild Satsuma's economy; in total, around one million Ryō worth of Ryukyuan coins were minted from 1862 to 1865.