Catalog
50 Mon 'Doshū Zenisatsu'
| Issuer | Tosa Domain |
|---|---|
| Year | 1868 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 五拾文 (Translation: Fifty Mon) |
| Reverse description | Printed in black with applied red official stamps. Twining plant motifs form a decorative border surrounding the central field, while the issuing authority inscription in Chinese seal script (tensho) is positioned along the lower portion of the note. |
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The Tosa Domain issued its own paper currency during the chaotic final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, when dozens of feudal domains printed hansatsu — domain notes — backed by little more than local authority. Tosa's "Doshū Zenisatsu" translates roughly as "provincial copper-coin notes," the denomination expressed in mon, the copper cash unit, at a moment when the metal itself was in short supply and increasingly worthless.
Tosa is better remembered for producing the Meiji Restoration's most aggressive architects — Sakamoto Ryōma among them — than for its monetary policy. These notes were rendered obsolete almost immediately by the new government's currency unification push beginning in 1868.