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1 Mon 'Gentsūgenpō'
| Issuer | Japan |
|---|---|
| Year | 1333-1568 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Four Chinese characters arranged in cruciform reading order around a central square hole, following the traditional East Asian cash coin convention. The legend reads clockwise from the top: 元 (yuán), 通 (tōng), 元 (yuán), 寳 (bǎo), forming the inscription 元通元寳 (Gentsūgenpō). The boldly cast characters are rendered in regular script (kaisho) style and are separated by the raised rims of the square central aperture. A plain raised rim encircles the coin's outer edge, and the field shows the characteristic granular surface texture of a sand-cast bronze flan. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Gentsūgenpō (元通元寶) was one of the Chinese-style cash coins imported into Japan in enormous quantities during the Muromachi period, when the chronic domestic shortage of bronze coinage forced Japanese merchants and the bakufu alike to rely almost entirely on Song, Yuan, and early Ming imports. Japan had no functioning copper coin mint of its own during these centuries. The coins circulated so freely, and were trusted so completely, that private merchants began issuing their own selection criteria — the so-called *erizeni* disputes, where certain worn or substandard pieces were rejected outright, causing repeated legal crises the Ashikaga shogunate proved wholly unable to resolve.