A Question On Japanese Silver Coins In Mutsuhito's Reign

1897 was when Japan switched to the gold standard.
You can see the change more clearly if you look at the gold coins.
Before 1897: Dragon on obverse
After 1897: Radiant sun on obverse (no dragon)

See the bottom of page 38 (page 5 in the pdf) of this, published by a branch of the Japanese government:
http://dl.ndl.go.jp/view/download/d...ternativeNo=

It basically says that after the first Sino-Japanese war, public opinion was that the dragon was unfit to be used as a symbol of the emperor.

Korea still had an emperor until 1910.

I think it is like asking why it took so long for the US to remove the fasces from its dime.
It was probably not enough of a problem to warrant a design change without any changes in the weight/size of the coins.

gxseries:


I think they could use paper notes in their country but the silver dollars are struck for foreign trade. This also explains why the dragon remained on the side of silver dollars than on the lower denomination coins. Businessmen like to use the currency they are familiar.

Production of 1 yen coins was stopped in 1897.
The existing coins were counterstamped with the character for silver.

In 1899 the Bank of Taiwan issued notes that were redeemable for Japanese silver coins.

These notes are very rare now. Perhaps one reason is because most of them were redeemed.
Probably so many were being redeemed that they ran out of the counterstamped coins, and had to resume production in 1901.

I do not know much about this subject, but apparently Taiwan moved to the gold standard in 1908, and import of silver was banned! This appears to be reflected in the low mintage of 1908 1 yen coins.
However, for reasons unknown to me, once again coins were minted in 1912 and 1914 with very high mintages.

Bungle, thank you so much for your input, I learn a lot from your comments.

bungle - there was a change in Korean coin size in 1907. At this point of time, Korea was essentially a Japanese puppet state after the Japan-Korea treaty in 1905. I don't see how Emperor Yunghui had much say after Emperor Gwangmu was forced to abdicate by the Japanese.

If the argument was to remove any Chinese related elements in 1897, this does not make any sense at all. The first coins struck for Korea in Osaka mint was in 1905. I still do not see any relationship with the so called "sinophobia".

publius - I do not understand this line:

" This measure, however, resulted in the existence of no coins between the silver 50 sen and the gold 5 yen. "

When looking at mintage figures, there does seem to be coins struck sporadically after 1897. If this is about silver yen coins not struck in between 1897 - 1901, I believe the mint was busy recalling circulated 1 yen coins to be counterstamped. When the source dried out, that was when new batch of coins were struck.

Is it true to say that after Japan had changed to Gold system, paper notes became more and more predominate in Taiwan and Korea (esp. when Korea is fully controlled after 1910), silver coins and bank notes were used in Japan and leaving silver yen (dollar) as a trading tool with China.

After the Sino-Japanese War, the role of the Government and Subject of the country heightened to a level that the Emperor became the figure-head of the country. Under this scenario, rising sun (representing the country) rather than a dragon became the emblem on the coins.

Bungle, do you agree?

Thank you Bungle, I can read part of it as there are some Chinese characters.