Japan's 1871 coinage reform was a foundational act of the new Meiji government, establishing a decimal system to replace the chaotic feudal monetary patchwork inherited from the Tokugawa shogunate. The "big type" designation distinguishes this first emission from the dimensionally reduced small type that followed almost immediately — the revision driven partly by international pressure to align Japanese gold coinage more closely with the trade gold standard then dominated by the Latin Monetary Union.
Struck at the newly established Osaka Mint, which had opened just weeks before production began with machinery and technical advisors imported from Britain.
Japan's 1871 coinage reform was a foundational act of the new Meiji government, establishing a decimal system to replace the chaotic feudal monetary patchwork inherited from the Tokugawa shogunate. The "big type" designation distinguishes this first emission from the dimensionally reduced small type that followed almost immediately — the revision driven partly by international pressure to align Japanese gold coinage more closely with the trade gold standard then dominated by the Latin Monetary Union.
Struck at the newly established Osaka Mint, which had opened just weeks before production began with machinery and technical advisors imported from Britain.