3 Fun Yamato Province; Tsubai-Chō

Tsubai-chō was a small post-town settlement in Yamato Province, and the Nagasawa office — operating under the merchant Obiya Kyūshichi — was among dozens of private commercial houses across the Kinai region that issued fractional paper currency during the mid-Edo period to address chronic shortages of small copper coin. These privately issued hansatsu-style notes circulated on the creditworthiness of the issuer alone, accepted locally but rarely beyond the immediate trading area.

The "3 Fun" denomination is telling — fractional fun notes were the workhorses of everyday market transactions, filling the gap between official coinage denominations that the Tokugawa mint consistently failed to supply in adequate volume.