Most likely Chinese. The bottom picture's character does mean 5, in both Chinese and Japanese. In the top picture the characters at the right appear to read Year 30. (The diagonal line in the top character is probably a scratch on the coin, as there is no character with a stroke in that position.) The Japanese reading of the characters at the left, "Tai ka me", does not match up with any era of Japanese history*, but as I do not know how to read them in Chinese, I am unable to determine if there is a Chinese era match. Whether it is a coin, with a denomination of 5 somethings, or a token or medal, is not apparent. *The Taika Era lasted only 5 years - 645-650CE - so obviously there was no 30th year. The era was among the very earliest historical periods of Japanese history.
I am not able to identify this coin, either, and I'm not sure I can add much to what hontonai has already said. In Chinese, the inscription on the obverse side is read (vertically top to bottom, starting at the right) as san (?) nian. The first character is san meaning "three". The second character is unclear. It may be shi, meaning "ten", but the bottom of the character seems to have two "legs" when it should only have one. I'm not even sure it is a character since it may be just part of the indistinct "blob" of metal on the right side of the coin. The third character is nian meaning "year". So, the right portion of the inscription reads "third year" or, possibly, "thirtieth year". The left part of the inscription (again read top to bottom) is da hua ming. Usually, this would refer to a "reign title" and dynasty. If the middle character were not there, the da ming would refer to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The middle character hua presents a real problem. There are no Ming Dynasty reign titles with a single character. There was a Ming Dynasty reign title "cheng hua", using the same hua character, but no coins were ever cast during that reign. Also, the syntax of placing the reign title between the da and ming is not correct. A literal translation of da hua ming would be "great transforming light" which, unfortunately, is not very enlightening in this case. As has already been stated, the character on the reverse side of the coin is wu meaning "five". As a final comment, this coin does not resemble Ming Dynasty coins which were round with a square hole in the middle. Gary
What leads you to that conclusion Traci? The legend certainly doesn't mention any province, or even anything that would give a hint as to approximate age. Round provincial or national government coins without center holes are not exactly common until post-Qing Dynasty times, circa 1912.
