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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;hontonai, post: 548074, member: 4703&quot;]in <a href="http://www.cointalk.com/forum/t43428/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.com/forum/t43428/">this thread</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>A friend in another forum who has the capability to Google in Japanese, discovered <a href="http://www.mint.go.jp/plant/chihouka02.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.mint.go.jp/plant/chihouka02.html" rel="nofollow">this page</a> on the Japan Mint&#039;s website.&nbsp; Unlike some of the other pages, this one does not have an English language version, so my Google searches didn&#039;t find it.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Hana furi&quot; (literally &quot;flower falling&quot;) has the idiomatic meaning &quot;pure silver&quot; because the way it flashes is deemed to resemble a falling flower - poetic people the Japanese!</p><p><br /></p><p>Webnasty&#039;s coin is a genuine issue 10 ryo, from the region on the Sea of Japan coast now roughly comprising Toyama and Ishikawa Provinces.&nbsp; It was first issued by a local lord about 1600, during the period preceding Ieyasu Tokugawa&#039;s victory at the decisive Battle of Sekigahara, which helped establish the Tokugawa Shongunate, which ruled for the next 268 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>Although regional coinage was formally outlawed by Tokugawa early in his rule, the ban didn&#039;t hold and hana furi circulated for nearly a century.</p><p><br /></p><p>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 &quot;yen&quot; denomination was declared equal to the older &quot;ryo&quot; denomination.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the old system 1 ryo was valued at 1,000 mon (the Chinese-style cash coins&#039; denomination), so 10 ryo was a sizeable amount.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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