Currency Carried by Merchants to a Land That Had Abandoned Coins

A Measure in a Land Without Coins

The Engishiki's law on commodity prices for stipends established official values for goods such as rice, cloth, and iron. The state itself had provided a measure other than coins. From the mid-Heian period, silk, cloth, and rice were used to measure value and make payments. Deeds for land sales were written in terms of a certain number of bolts of silk or bushels of rice.

Wealth became concentrated in land. In the 11th century, donated estates (kishinchi-kei shōen) spread, and the number of domains with tax exemption privileges increased. In 1069, Emperor Go-Sanjō established the Office for the Investigation of Estate Records, but this trend could not be stopped.

Ships Arriving on the Shores of Hakata

At the end of the 11th century, unfamiliar coins began to be unloaded in the port of Hakata. They were coins from the Song dynasty.

By the mid-12th century, ships from the Song dynasty arrived on the shores of Hakata, and their Song Chinese shipmasters, known as kōshu, settled there. Their settlement was called Tōbō. Unloaded from the ships' holds were boxes of ceramics and piles of copper coins strung on cords. These were Huáng Sòng Tōng Bǎo coins, minted across the sea and brought over the waves. If you excavate the ruins of Hakata, fragments of these coins and pottery still emerge from the earth today.

Wealth Moved by Merchants

It was not the Imperial Court that brought coins back to this island; it was the sea merchants. Not an imperial edict, but the calculations of profit and loss by the merchants gathered in Hakata reshaped the currency of this country.

At that time in Ōshū, Fujiwara no Kiyohira was in control of Mutsu Province. His sources of wealth were gold dust and horses. That gold dust went to the capital and eventually crossed over to Song China. And what was brought back in return were the copper coins this country had stopped minting. It was not the state that transported the coins, but men like the shipmaster Xie Guoming.

The "Coin Sickness" That Covered the Capital

In the latter half of the 12th century, the imported coins flooded the capital, Kyō. The Hyakurenshō, in an entry for the third year of the Jishō era (1179), writes: "All people, high and low, are afflicted. This is called the coin sickness."

At first, the Imperial Court tried to prohibit them. But these coins were not minted by the state. One of the three pillars supporting the wealth of the Heishi clan was the profit from the Japan-Song trade.

For the generation that did not know the Kengen Taihō, the first coins they ever held in their hands were coins from a foreign land.