Third And Last Unidentified Coin, Please Help?

Japan, Showa 46, 1971 10 yen. It's bronze, and it's in still in circulation.

wd1040

help me with the date please. I always have trouble reading these dates.it seems some are right to left and others are left to to right. Can you help me read this one. I know I'm looking for 46 somehow here.

Actually, on magnifying the pic, I read the date as Showa Year 49 (1974).


I've copied and edited Buckeye Gal's pic to illustrate:



The key to reading "oriental" dates, whether they be Japanese, Taiwanese, old Chinese or old Korean, is to find the character I've labelled "year" - it's pronounced differently in the different languages but it means the same thing in all languages, it's always written the same and it's always at the "tail" of the date. Once you find it, you know which way the year should be read, and you can start converting the numbers.

Also be aware that this numbering system has no concept of "zero"; if a zero "should" be there, then that unit is simply left out. And the "teens" are usually written simply as "ten" rather than "one ten". So, "Year 15" is written "ten 5 year", while Year 50 is written "5 ten year". It's easy to get confused.

Finally, a special character is used for Year 1. See the example in this thread.