Found some interesting videos on youtube. Some amazing footage!!! You'll never know what you can find online these days. All of them are in Japanese. I'll try to write a quick summary Japan Mint: Part I story. A story to illustrate the type of metals used and why. Some of the early planning was considering metals that could be recalled and melted down for war purposes. Nickel was imported so it had to be culled. Aluminium was used for aircraft. The weight of the coins were reduced but had to be replaced with tin. But this metal was not suitable for use in Japan and this was also removed from circulation. There was plan to use porcelain - some were cast in Aichi and Kyoto but they didn't really get a chance to circulate. Recovery of precious metals from bombed out Imperial Mint Pretty self-explanatory. Discovery of 500,000 Porcelain 1 sen (!) This was a pretty recent discovery of a massive porcelain hoard. Most of them did not get to circulate but to find something this large is quite unheard of. This was found in a company that specializes in dental products (!). These are actually quite common and aren't worth too much. However, supposedly legend says that there a hoard of the scarcer 5 and 10 sen still being stashed somewhere... Hope you find them interesting!
The first video was from the Japan Mint. The Japan Mint staff that I contacted when researching my book were very helpful by sharing with me what they could about their colleagues in Korea.
Very informative. For those of us that are rather limited in Kanji and Japanese you can click the CC button " closed captioning and select your preferred language. The context is challenged by similar sound words for coin and soldier, but once you figure out that they are talking about coins and not soldiers the rest is pretty easy.
