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100 Mon Mikawa

Issuer Japan
Year 1730
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Size 160 × 37 mm
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Obverse lettering 紙手物産澤長



(Translation: Hundred mon)
Reverse description The upper register presents a vignette of a Japanese crane in flight amid pine branches, a classical motif symbolizing longevity and good fortune. Below, a vertical series of text panels carries issue-related inscriptions and administrative text. A circular red official seal is applied as an authenticating mark.
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Comments

Mikawa Province han notes occupy an interesting corner of Edo-period monetary history. The Tokugawa shogunate permitted individual domains to issue their own paper currency — hansatsu — for circulation strictly within their boundaries, a deliberate policy of monetary fragmentation that kept economic power decentralized. Mikawa, as a province with particular symbolic resonance as the ancestral home of the Tokugawa clan itself, was no exception to this system.

The 160 × 37 mm strip format is characteristic of hansatsu production, typically block-printed on washi using locally sourced mulberry fiber. Official domain seals functioned as the primary authentication device — sophisticated counterfeiting was rare not because it was technically difficult but because a forged note was only useful within a single domain, dramatically limiting the incentive.

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