Japanese Mint

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Entrance gate to the main building of the Japanese Mint in Osaka

The Japanese Mint or State Central Mint ( Japanese 独立 行政 法人 造幣 局 , Dokuritsu Gyōsei Hōjin Zōheikyoku , English Japanese Mint ) is a self-governing body and the state mint of Japan. It produces Japanese hard money and medals , tests and analyzes metals, especially precious metals. Its headquarters are in Tenma, in the Kita district of the Osaka city prefecture . The Mint Museum ( 造幣 博物館 ) is also located on the mint's premises. Two other offices are located in the Toshima district in Tokyo Prefecture ( 35 ° 43 ′ 39.4 ″  N , 139 ° 43 ′ 18.6 ″  E ) and in the Saeki district in Hiroshima ( 34 ° 22 ′ 40.6 ″  N , 132 ° 21 '26.8 "  E ). The Japanese Mint currently employs 1037 people (as of April 2010).

overview

In 1868 the Meiji government decided to withdraw the old gold ( 金 座 , kinza ) and silver coins ( 銀座 , ginza ) and for the production of the Edo period nibuban ( 二 分 判 ) and ichibugin ( 一 分 銀 ), oblong, rectangular gold and silver coins to set up a mint authority. In March 1869, the newly established Dajō-kan ( 太 政 官 ), the Great Council of State and the highest office of the Meiji period , abolished this minting authority and set up a mint, which in August was renamed the Mint Office ( 造幣 寮 , zōheiryō ) and was subordinated to the Ministry of Finance.

Also in 1868 the equipment and machines necessary for the production of coins, which at that time could not be produced due to the heavy industry not yet existing in Japan, were ordered from the Hong Kong Mint, which was part of the British Empire . At the end of the year, the English civil engineer Thomas James Waters was hired as a foreign contractor ( oyatoi gaikokujin ) and entrusted with the purchase of the machines and the planning of the building for the new mint. In March 1870, the English engineer Thomas William Kinder , who had been head of the mint in Hong Kong until then , was hired as a foreign contractor and he was given the management of the newly created mint office. On January 17, 1871, the Osaka Mint began producing silver coins. The official founding ceremony took place on April 4th. On June 27, the "New Currency Regulation " ( ver 貨 条例 , shinka jōrei ) was announced, which laid the foundation for a modern currency system in Japan.

In January 1875 William Kinder was dismissed along with 10 other foreign contractors, ED Dillon took over the examination and analysis, the management of the mint office and advice was given to the English metallurgist William Gowland , who was at the same time the researcher of barrows ( Kofun ) and one of the founders of the modern Japanese archeology is considered transferred. Two years later, in 1877, the mint office was renamed to the name Mint Office ( 造幣 局 ), which is still used today , and on April 1, 2003 it was converted into a self-governing body. The mint produces exclusively hard money. Paper money, on the other hand, is produced in the state printing house .

On the grounds of the mint in Osaka there is a park with cherry trees, which is well worth seeing and which is open to the public, in addition to the mint museum.

Coin production (of one, five, ten, fifty, one hundred and five hundred yen coins) rose from 75,500 coins annually in 1948 to 500,000 coins in the 1950s to a maximum of 5.6 million coins in 1974, and again with 4.8 and 4.9 million coins with a similar peak value in the years 1989 and 1990, decreased in the past 10 years to an average of 8–900,000 coins annual production.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ginza . In: Bruno Lewin (Hrsg.): Small Lexicon of Japanology: on the cultural history of Japan . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1995, p. 111–112 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 11, 2015]).
  2. ↑ 造幣 局 . In: ブ リ タ ニ カ 国際 大 百科 事 典 小 項目 事 典 at kotobank.jp. Retrieved April 10, 2015 (Japanese).
  3. ↑ Takashi Matsushita: 官 営 工場 が 大阪 産業 集 積 の 形成 に 与 え た 影響 の 相 異性 - 大阪 砲兵 工廠 と 造幣 局 の 比較 を 通 じ て - (Dissimilarity of the Effects of State-run Factory is Given to the Formation of Osaka Industrial Accumulation: Through the Comparison of Osaka Arsenal and Osaka Mint) . In: 大阪 産業 経 済 リ サ ー チ セ ン タ ー (Ed.): 産 開 研 論 集 . No. March 25 , 2013, ISSN  0915-082X , p. 37–50 (Japanese, lg.jp [PDF; accessed on April 11, 2015] With an overview of the foreign contractors employed in the Osaka Mint on p. 41).

Web links

Commons : Japanese Mint  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Japan Mint. same, 2015, accessed April 10, 2015 (English, official website).
  • Japan Mint in Osaka - representative of western modernization. Coin Week, 2015, accessed on April 11, 2015 (with detailed information on the Coin Museum on the premises of the mint in Osaka).
  • The Osaka Mint. In: Japanese Old Photographs in Bakamatsu-Meiji Period. Nagasaki University Library Collection, 2006, accessed April 11, 2015 (English, Historical Recordings of the Osaka Mint).

Coordinates: 34 ° 41 ′ 48.6 ″  N , 135 ° 31 ′ 16.3 ″  E