in this thread. A friend in another forum who has the capability to Google in Japanese, discovered this page on the Japan Mint's website. Unlike some of the other pages, this one does not have an English language version, so my Google searches didn't find it. "Hana furi" (literally "flower falling") has the idiomatic meaning "pure silver" because the way it flashes is deemed to resemble a falling flower - poetic people the Japanese! Webnasty's coin is a genuine issue 10 ryo, from the region on the Sea of Japan coast now roughly comprising Toyama and Ishikawa Provinces. It was first issued by a local lord about 1600, during the period preceding Ieyasu Tokugawa's victory at the decisive Battle of Sekigahara, which helped establish the Tokugawa Shongunate, which ruled for the next 268 years. Although regional coinage was formally outlawed by Tokugawa early in his rule, the ban didn't hold and hana furi circulated for nearly a century. Early in the Meiji era following the overthrow of the Tokugawa warlords, when Japan began minting modern coinage and revised its monetary system, the new "yen" denomination was declared equal to the older "ryo" denomination. In the old system 1 ryo was valued at 1,000 mon (the Chinese-style cash coins' denomination), so 10 ryo was a sizeable amount.
hontonai, is there a forum that specializes in Japanese coins? Also, this coin puzzles me. I have no doubt that the coin in the Japanese mint site looks silver but with webnasty's picture - it looks like cheap aluminum. I understand color can be deceptive but don't you think the coin is rather rare considering how high the face value was???
I suspect there are some in Japanese, but none in English that I am aware of. Absolutely. 10 ryo = 1 oban, and most cataloged oban were gold. Heritage has auctioned a few hanafuri at prices from a few hundred to more than a thousand dollars, including buyer's premium.
