please help me coin number 1

[gerard974]

hello
i have always the same problem with the letters weight 3.73 gramms
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Gerard

[Figleaf]

"Si tu donnes un poisson à une personne il mangera un jour; si tu lui apprends à pêcher, il mangera toujours"

You will find in the Wikipedia lemma on Japan that the name of the country in Japanese is 日本 (Nihon). Turn the lower picture around and you will find these characters on top of your coin. Now search Wikipedia for Japanese yen. You will easily find the character 円. It is not on your coin. This means that the denomination is in sen or rin. On the same page, you find their characters: sen (1⁄100, 銭), and rin (1⁄1000, 厘). Your coin has a denomination in sen.

At this point, you need a source for Chinese/Japanese numbers. You will find them in KM, but also in Wikipedia (look in the column "normal".) The one is written as 一 which completes the denomination to 1 sen. Dates are a bit difficult because a) they are regnal years and b) the notation is slightly different. Start by looking for the character 十 which means 10. If you don't find it, that means that the regnal year is below 10. In the case of your coin, it is 9, the second of the four characters on the lower picture down (after you turned the coin around.) The first character means year. That leaves two more characters: the reign name of the emperor. You can find the reign names (the most recent are Meiji, Taisho and Showa) in KM and in Wikipedia. Your coin is from the Showa period, the 9th year of emperor Hirohito: 昭和. Since this emperor started his reign in 1901, your coin is dated 1901 + 9 = 1910. With a little practice, Japanese coins are not difficult to read. As a bonus, the characters for the numbers are the same on Chinese coins and on Mahjong tiles.

Peter

[gerard974]

Hello Peter
thank you very much but i think that i go stopped the collection from Japan. In year 2013 i have try to understand the dates and i have not arrived . Yesterday i have more try and is the same ,i dont arrive . You say that my coin is 1901+9 =1910 Showa period and on the Krause is for KM 42 1916 to 1924 and KM 47 1929 to 1938
like we say in french"d'un ane on n'en fait pas un cheval de course"
cordialement  Gerard

[bart]

Hello Gerard,

Your sen coin is year 1934. Hirohito's reign started in 1926 (not in 1901, that was his year of birth) and so that year was regarded as year 1 of the Showa reign. Your coin has year 9 of the Showa reign, being 8 years later. So your coin is from 1926(year 1) + 8 (to be year 9) = 1934

Bart

[gerard974]

Bonjour Bart
thank you very much
Gerard

[Figleaf]

Thank you Bart. You saved me time I didn't have. Great team work, like in the days of Muntenbodemvondsten ...

Peter

[bart]