1.
Sado, Niigata
Sado is a city located on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, in the Chūbu region of Japan. Since 2004, the city has comprised the island, although not all of its total area of is urbanized. Sado is the sixth largest island of Japan in area following the four main islands, as of April 1,2011, the city has an estimated population of 63,231 and a population density of 73.93 persons per km2. The total area is 855.26 km2, the island consists of two parallel mountain ranges running roughly southwest– and two riversnortheast, enclosing a central plain. The Ōsado range, in the north, is higher, with peaks of Mount Kinpoku, the highest point of the island at 1,172 metres, Mount Kongō, Mount Myōken. Kosado range in the faces the Honshu coast. The highest point in Kosado is Ōjiyama at 645 m, the plain in between is called Kuninaka and is the most populated area. The Kuninaka plain opens on its eastern side onto Ryōtsu Bay, and on its western side onto Mano Bay, the island has a symmetrical shape. Lake Kamo, on the side of Kuninaka, is filled with salt water.
The large number of artifacts found near Ogi in the South of the island demonstrate that Sado was populated as early as the Jomon period. The Nihon Shoki mentions that Mishihase people visited the island in 544, the island formed a distinct province, the Sado Province, separate from the Echigo province on Honshū, at the beginning of the 8th century. At first, the province was a gun, but was divided into three gun, Sawata and Kamo. In 1185, the designated representative Shugo for Sado, the rule of the Honma clan on Sado lasted until Uesugi Kagekatsu took control of the island in 1589. After the defeat of the Uesugi at Sekigahara, and the discovery of gold on the island, the island was for a short time an independent prefecture, called the Aikawa prefecture, between 1871 and 1876, during the Meiji era. It became a part of Niigata Prefecture, which it is still as of today, at the end of the 19th century, there were three districts, seven towns, and 51 villages. When direct control from mainland Japan started around the 8th century, exile to remote locations such as Sado was a very serious punishment, second only to the death penalty, and people were not expected to return.
The earliest known dissident to be condemned to exile on Sadogashima was a poet and he was sent to the island in 722, reportedly for having criticized the emperor. The former Emperor Juntoku was sent to Sado after his role in the Jōkyū War of 1221, the disgraced emperor survived twenty years on the island before his death, and because he was sent to Sado, this emperor is known posthumously as Sado-no-in
2.
Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, known as the Tokugawa bakufu and the Edo bakufu, was the last feudal Japanese military government, which existed between 1600 and 1868. The head of government was the shogun, and each was a member of the Tokugawa clan, the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle and the years of the shogunate became known as the Edo period. This time is called the Tokugawa period or pre-modern. Following the Sengoku period, the government had been largely re-established by Oda Nobunaga during the Azuchi–Momoyama period. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu, society in the Tokugawa period, unlike the shogunates before it, was supposedly based on the strict class hierarchy originally established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The daimyō were at the top, followed by the warrior-caste of samurai, with the farmers and traders ranking below. In some parts of the country, particularly smaller regions, daimyō and samurai were more or less identical, since daimyō might be trained as samurai, the largely inflexible nature of this social stratification system unleashed disruptive forces over time.
Taxes on the peasantry were set at fixed amounts which did not account for inflation or other changes in monetary value, as a result, the tax revenues collected by the samurai landowners were worth less and less over time. This often led to confrontations between noble but impoverished samurai and well-to-do peasants, ranging from simple local disturbances to much bigger rebellions. None, proved compelling enough to challenge the established order until the arrival of foreign powers. The Tokugawa Shogunate came to an end in 1868 with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. The bakuhan taisei was the political system in the Edo period of Japan. Baku is an abbreviation of bakufu, meaning military government—that is, the han were the domains headed by daimyō. Vassals held inherited lands and provided service and homage to their lords. The bakuhan taisei split feudal power between the shogunate in Edo and provincial domains throughout Japan, provinces had a degree of sovereignty and were allowed an independent administration of the han in exchange for loyalty to the shogun, who was responsible for foreign relations and national security.
The shogun and lords were all daimyō, feudal lords with their own bureaucracies, the shogun administered the most powerful han, the hereditary fief of the House of Tokugawa. Each level of government administered its own system of taxation, the emperor, nominally a religious leader, held no real power, this was invested in the shogun. The shogunate had the power to discard and transform domains, the sankin kōtai system of alternative residence required each daimyō to reside in alternate years between the han and the court in Edo
3.
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which effectively ruled Japan from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605 and his given name is sometimes spelled Iyeyasu, according to the historical pronunciation of he. Ieyasu was posthumously enshrined at Nikkō Tōshō-gū with the name Tōshō Daigongen and he was one of the three unifiers of Japan, along with his Former Lord Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Tokugawa Ieyasu was born in Okazaki Castle in Mikawa on the 26th day of the month of the eleventh year of Tenbun. His mother and father were step-siblings and they were just 17 and 15 years old, when Ieyasu was born. Two years later, Odai-no-kata was sent back to her family, as both husband and wife remarried and both went on to have further children, Ieyasu in the end had 11 half-brothers and sisters. The Matsudaira family was split in 1550, one wanted to be vassals of the Imagawa clan.
As a result, much of Ieyasus early years were spent in danger as wars with the Oda and this family feud was the reason behind the murder of Ieyasus paternal grandfather, Matsudaira Kiyoyasu. Unlike his father and the majority of his branch of the family, Ieyasus father, Hirotada, in 1548, when the Oda clan invaded Mikawa, Hirotada turned to Imagawa Yoshimoto, the head of the Imagawa clan, for help to repel the invaders. Yoshimoto agreed under the condition that Hirotada send Ieyasu to Sunpu as a hostage, Oda Nobuhide, the leader of the Oda clan, learned of this arrangement and had Ieyasu abducted from his entourage en route to Sunpu. Ieyasu was just five years old at the time, Nobuhide threatened to execute Ieyasu unless his father severed all ties with the Imagawa clan. Hirotada replied that sacrificing his own son would show his seriousness in his pact with the Imagawa clan, despite this refusal, Nobuhide chose not to kill Ieyasu, but instead held him for the next three years at the Mansho Temple in Nagoya.
In 1549, when Ieyasu was 6, his father Hirotada was murdered by his own treacherous vassals, at about the same time, Oda Nobuhide died during an epidemic. Nobuhides death dealt a blow to the Oda clan. An army under the command of Imagawa Sessai laid siege to the castle where Oda Nobuhiro, Nobuhides eldest son, with the castle about to fall, Sessai offered a deal to Oda Nobunaga, Nobuhides second son. Sessai offered to give up the siege if Ieyasu was handed over to the Imagawa, Nobunaga agreed, and so Ieyasu was taken as a hostage to Sunpu. Here he lived a good life as hostage and potentially useful future ally of the Imagawa clan until 1556 when he was age 13 years old. In 1556 he came of age, following tradition, one year later, at the age of 13, he married his first wife, Lady Tsukiyama, and changed his name again to Matsudaira Kurandonosuke Motoyasu
4.
Gold mining
Gold mining is the resource extraction of gold by mining. As of 2015, the worlds largest gold producer by far was China with 455 tonnes, the second-largest producer, mined 270 tonnes in the same year, followed by Russia with 250 tonnes. It is impossible to know the date that humans first began to mine gold. The graves of the necropolis were built between 4700 and 4200 BC, indicating that gold mining could be at least 7000 years old. A group of German and Georgian archaeologists claims the Sakdrisi site in southern Georgia, dating to the 3rd or 4th millennium BC, bronze age gold objects are plentiful, especially in Ireland and Spain, and there are several well known possible sources. Romans used hydraulic mining methods, such as hushing and ground sluicing on a scale to extract gold from extensive alluvial deposits. Mining was under the control of the state but the mines may have been leased to civilian contractors some time later, Gold was a prime motivation for the campaign in Dacia when the Romans invaded Transylvania in what is now modern Romania in the second century AD.
The legions were led by the emperor Trajan, and their exploits are shown on Trajans Column in Rome, under the Eastern Roman Empire Emperor Justinians rule, gold was mined in the Balkans, Armenia and Nubia. In the area of the Kolar Gold Fields in Bangarpet Taluk, Kolar District of Karnataka state, gold was first mined prior to the 2nd and 3rd century AD by digging small pits. The Champion reef at the Kolar gold fields was mined to a depth of 50 metres during the Gupta period in the fifth century AD, during the Chola period in the 9th and 10th century AD, the scale of the operation grew. The metal continued to be mined by the eleventh century kings of South India, the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1560, and by Tipu Sultan, the king of Mysore state and it is estimated that the total gold production in Karnataka to date is 1000 tons. The mining of the Slovak deposit primarily around Kremnica was the largest of the Medieval period in Europe, the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand led to the Second Boer War and ultimately the founding of South Africa.
The Carlin Trend of Nevada, U. S. was discovered in 1961, as of 2015, the worlds largest gold producer by far was China with 455 tonnes/year. The second-largest producer, mined 270 tonnes in the same year, despite the decreasing gold content of ores, the production is increasing. This can be achieved with industrial installations, and new process, placer mining is the technique by which gold that has accumulated in a placer deposit is extracted. Placer deposits are composed of loose material that makes tunneling difficult. Gold panning is mostly a manual technique of separating gold from other materials, shallow pans are filled with sand and gravel that may contain gold. The pan is submerged in water and shaken, sorting the gold from the gravel, as gold is much denser than rock, it quickly settles to the bottom of the pan
5.
Torii
A torii is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred. The presence of a torii at the entrance is usually the simplest way to identify Shinto shrines, and they are however a common sight at Japanese Buddhist temples too, where they stand at the entrance of the temples own shrine, called chinjusha and are usually very small. Their first appearance in Japan can be pinpointed to at least the mid-Heian period because they are mentioned in a text written in 922. The oldest existing stone torii was built in the 12th century, the oldest wooden torii is a ryōbu torii at Kubō Hachiman Shrine in Yamanashi prefecture built in 1535. Torii were traditionally made from wood or stone, but today they can be made of reinforced concrete, copper. They are usually either unpainted or painted vermilion with a black upper lintel, Inari shrines typically have many torii because those who have been successful in business often donate in gratitude a torii to Inari, kami of fertility and industry.
Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto has thousands of torii, each bearing the donors name. The function of a torii is to mark the entrance to a sacred space, for this reason, the road leading to a Shinto shrine is almost always straddled by one or more torii, which are therefore the easiest way to distinguish a shrine from a Buddhist temple. If the sandō passes under multiple torii, the outer of them is called ichi no torii, the following ones, closer to the shrine, are usually called, in order, ni no torii and san no torii. Other torii can be found farther into the shrine to represent increasing levels of holiness as one nears the inner sanctuary, because of the strong relationship between Shinto shrines and the Japanese Imperial family, a torii stands in front of the tombs of each Emperor. Whether torii existed in Japan before Buddhism or, to the contrary, arrived with it is, however, in the past torii must have been used at the entrance of Buddhist temples. Even today, as prominent a temple as Osakas Shitennō-ji, founded in 593 by Shōtoku Taishi, many Buddhist temples include one or more Shinto shrines dedicated to their tutelary kami, and in that case a torii marks the shrines entrance.
Benzaiten is a syncretic goddess derived from the Indian divinity Sarasvati which unites elements of both Shinto and Buddhism, for this reason halls dedicated to her can be found at both temples and shrines, and in either case in front of the hall stands a torii. The goddess herself is sometimes portrayed with a torii on her head, until the Meiji period torii were routinely adorned with plaques carrying Buddhist sutras. The association between Japanese Buddhism and the torii is therefore old and profound, Japanese mountain ascetic hermits with a long tradition as mighty warriors endowed with supernatural powers, sometimes use as their symbol a torii. The torii is used as a symbol of Japan in non-religious contexts. For example, it is the symbol of the Marine Corps Security Force Regiment, the origins of the torii are unknown and there are several different theories on the subject, none of which has gained universal acceptance. They may, for example, have originated in India from the gates in the monastery of Sanchi in central India
6.
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay.
The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces.
Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
7.
Gold bar
Larger gold bars that are produced by pouring the molten metal into molds are called ingots. Smaller bars may be manufactured by minting or stamping from appropriately rolled gold sheets, the standard gold bar held as gold reserves by central banks and traded among bullion dealers is the 400-troy-ounce Good Delivery gold bar. The kilobar, which is 1000 grams in mass, is the bar that is manageable and is used extensively for trading. The premium on these bars when traded is very low over the value of the gold making it ideal for small transfers between banks and traders. Most kilobars are flat, although some investors, particularly in Europe, Gold bars are classified into two different types and minted, based on their method of manufacturing. Cast bars are made by pouring molten gold into a mold to shape the gold product. Minted bars are made from gold blanks that have been cut to the required dimensions from a flat piece of gold. Markings are almost always applied by presses, Gold is measured in troy ounces, often simply referred to as ounce when the reference to gold is evident.
One troy ounce is equivalent to 31.1034768 grams, commonly encountered in daily life is the avoirdupois ounce, an Imperial weight in countries still using British weights and measures or United States customary units. The avoirdupois ounce is lighter than an ounce, one avoirdupois ounce equals 28.349523125 grams. The standard gold bar held and traded internationally by central banks, its precise gold content is permitted to vary between 350 oz and 430 oz. The minimum purity required is 99. 5% gold and these bars must be stored in recognized and secure gold bullion vaults to maintain their quality status of Good Delivery. The recorded provenance of this bar assures integrity and maximum resale value, one tonne =1000 kilograms =32,150.746 troy ounces. One kilogram =1000 grams =32.15074656 troy ounces, one tola =11.6638038 grams =0.375 troy ounces. TT =117 grams Tola is a traditional Indian measure for the weight of gold, many international gold manufacturers supply tola bars of 999.96 purity. The worlds largest gold bar stands at 250 kg, measuring at the base 45.5 cm ×22.5 cm and 17 cm high with 5 degree draft angle and it was manufactured by the Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi.
It went on display at the Toi Gold Museum on July 11,2005. Its gold content was valued in 2005 at 400 million yen, As of 29 October 2014, it is worth approximately US$10. 33M, Bullion Doré bar Fort Knox Bullion Depository Gold as an investment Gold coin Ingot Millesimal fineness Official gold reserves Platinum Precious metal Silver
8.
Kagawa Prefecture
Kagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on Shikoku island. Kagawa was formerly known as Sanuki Province, for a brief period between August 1876 and December 1888, Kagawa was made a part of Ehime Prefecture. Located in Kagawas capital city, the mountain of Yashima was the battlefield for one of the struggles between the Heike and the Genji clans. The Sanuki Mountains run along the southern border, Kagawa is currently the smallest prefecture, by area, in Japan. Osaka Prefecture held that title until Kansai International Airport was reclaimed from the ocean in the early 1990s, Kagawa is a relatively narrow prefecture located between the mountains of Shikoku and the sea. As of April 1,2012, 11% of the land area of the prefecture was designated as Natural Parks, namely Setonaikai National Park. Eight cities are located in Kagawa Prefecture, These are the towns in each district, in 2008 there were over 700 udon restaurants in this prefecture alone. Aside from udon, Kagawa is famous for hone-tsuki-dori, seasoned chicken cooked on the bone.
Originating from Marugame City, the dish has now become a dish in izakaya restaurants across the country. Olives and olive related products have come to be associated as Kagawa foods. As the first place in Japan to successfully cultivate olives, Kagawa has been producing olive related products since 1908. As well as winning both domestic and international awards for the quality of its oil, Kagawa has created two offshoot food brands from its olive industry - olive beef and olive Yellowtail. Waste organic matter from olive pressing is used as feed for cattle, due to the high amount of polyphenol in the olive waste, the flesh of the respective meats does not oxidize or lose colour easily. Other local specialties include wasanbon sugar sweets, soumen noodles and shoyu soy sauce, recent years have seen an interest in Sanuki udon across Japan, and many Japanese now take day-trips to taste the many Sanuki udon restaurants in Kagawa. Takamatsu Airport The novel Battle Royale by Koushun Takami was set in the town of Shiroiwa in the Kagawa Prefecture.
Okishima, the island on which much of the novel takes place is placed in the Seto Inland Sea. The manga places Shiroiwa in Kagawa Prefecture, while the film moves Shiroiwa to Kanagawa Prefecture, Kagawa Prefecture is the main setting of the book Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Kagawa Prefecture is the setting of the anime Pocos Udon World, Kagawa Prefecture English homepage Official Kagawa Prefecture Japanese homepage National Archives of Japan
9.
Naoshima, Kagawa
Naoshima is an island town administratively part of Kagawa District, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan located in the Seto Inland Sea. As of 2003, the town has an population of 3,583. The total area is 14.22 km², the island is known for its many contemporary art museums. For example, the Chichu Art Museum houses a number of site-specific installations by James Turrell, Walter De Maria, and paintings by Claude Monet. Designed by Tadao Ando, it is located on one of the highest points of the island, another contemporary museum is Benesse House, by Ando. The museums and beauty of the island draw many tourists, whose visits help support the local economy, Benesse Corporation has directed the creation and operation of the islands museums and other projects since the late 1980s. Naoshima is the city of Timmins, Canada. Media related to Naoshima, Kagawa at Wikimedia Commons Official website Benesse Art Site Naoshima I Love Setouchi - Setouchi Brand Naoshima travel guide from Wikivoyage
10.
Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It.
Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing.
The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
11.
Izu, Shizuoka
Izu is a city located in central Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of September 2015, the city had an population of 31,265. The total was 363.97 square kilometres, Izu is located in the north-central portion of Izu Peninsula, and includes most of the Amagi Mountains. The region is hilly and some 80% of the city area is covered by forest, the Kano River runs through the city, which has a short coastline to the west on Suruga Bay of the Pacific Ocean. The area has hot springs. Warmed by the warm Kuroshio Current, the area enjoys a maritime climate with hot, humid summers and mild. During the cadastral reform of the early Meiji period in 1889, Kimisawa District merged with Tagata District in 1896. Shuzenji became a town in 1924, followed by Toi in 1938, Nakaizu in 1958, the modern city of Izu was established on April 1,2004 by the merger of the towns of Shuzenji, Toi and Amagiyugashima. The economy of the city of Izu is centered on tourism, farming/forestry, Izu is noted for its production of wasabi and shiitake.
During the Edo period, the area was known for its production of gold and other ores, however. Izu has seven schools, four middle schools and two high schools
12.
Tokugawa coinage
Tokugawa coinage was a unitary and independent metallic monetary system established by Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1601 in Japan, and which lasted throughout the Tokugawa period until its end in 1867. The establishment of Tokugawa coinage followed a period in which Japan was dependent on Chinese bronze coins for its currency, Tokugawa coinage lasted for more than two centuries, and ended with the events of the Boshin war and the establishment of the Meiji restoration. The first attempt at a new currency were made by Hideyoshi, from 1601, Tokugawa coinage was minted in gold and bronze denominations. The denominations were fixed, but the rates actually fluctuated on the exchange market, the material for the coinage came from gold and silver mines across Japan. To this effect, gold mines were opened and exploited. Initially, the coinage was used essentially for export purposes in order to pay for imports of goods from China. With the beginning of the 18th century, Japan started to restrict the export of bullion currency, an export ban on monetary specie was imposed by Arai Hakuseki in 1715.
Trade substitution was encouraged, but remained limited due to the policy of closure. Upon Arai Hakusekis suggestion the government increased again the gold and silver content of coinage in 1714-1715, in 1736, Japan abandoned this policy and again increased the money supply, with a resulting price stability for the next 80 years. From 1818 to 1829 the money supply increased by 60%, severe inflation again followed as prices nearly doubled. Tokugawa coinage worked according to a monetary standard, using gold and bronze coins. The systems worked by multiples of 4, and coins were valued according to the Ryō, one Ryō was worth 4 Bu,16 Shu, or 4,000 Mon. The Ōban was a large gold coin plate, equivalent to ten Ryōs. The Koban was a regular ovoid gold coin, equivalent to one Ryō, the initial Keichō Koban had a weight of 18. 20g. The 1714 Sado Koban had a weight of 18. 20g and was made with an alloy of typically 85. 69% of gold and 14. 25% of silver, the Nibuban was worth half a Koban and was rectangular gold coin.
The Ichibuban could be made of silver or gold, in which case it was a quarter of a Koban. The gold Ichibuban of 1714 had a weight of 4.5 g, the silver Ichibuban from 1837 to 1854 weighed 8.66 g, with an alloy of 0. 21% gold and 98. 86% silver. There were Nishuban and Isshuban small denominations of silver or gold, from 1853 to 1865, the silver Isshuban weighed 1.88 g, with an alloy of 1. 7% gold,98. 7% silver and 1. 12% copper
