1 Mon 'Gindaitsūhō' Normal characters

The Gindaitsūhō — literally "silver substitute currency" — was authorized in 1703 as an emergency measure when silver shortages in Edo-period Japan forced the Tokugawa shogunate to introduce copper coinage into circuits where silver had previously dominated. The "normal characters" designation distinguishes standard-script examples from the wave-script and other calligraphic variants produced at different casting facilities, a distinction that matters considerably for attribution to specific mints.

Cast rather than struck, as with all Japanese cash coinage of the period, with sand-mold techniques inherited from Chinese precedent going back centuries.