中世末-近世初頭における貨幣問題 : 中世的貨幣体系から近世的貨幣体系へ (<第五十九回大会特集号>徳川期貨幣の経済史 : 小額貨幣を中心として)

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to trace the change of the monetary system from the medieval ages to the early modern ages and to clarify the characteristics of the newly established monetary system. I. The monetary system of medieval Japan 1) There was no power who possessed the monetary vereignty (the monopolistic right of coinage), and therefore, 2) demand for money was met by importing copper coins from China and making domestic use of them, and in relation to non-monopoly of the monetary sovereignty, 3) gold and silver were not minted until Sengoku period, the latter half of the fifteenth century. As mentioned above, a great many copper coins had been imported from china and used as domestic currency in medieval Japan. Seventy or eighty percent of them consisted of those which were minted in Northern Sung China (960-1127), the rest containing coins minted in Korea, Annam (Vietnam) and other Asian countries. In China they suffered from continual shortage of money in spite of increase in number of coinage. One of the reasons of coin shortage is that there was a rise in demand for coins in the country, but the other, major and more important, is that coins minted in China were widely used as domestic currency in many Asian countries, not to speak of Japan. In other words, Chinese copper coin was a kind of "international currency", or common currency in Asian economic world. Both Kamakura and Muromachi Shogunate have not issued their own currency, but admitted to use Chinese coins as means of payment. It is not said that they could not get copper as material of coin, nor that they had no technique to mint coin. It was more advantageous for them to import coins from China and to admit to use them than to mint their own coins, because the Chinese coins had already circulated in Asian countries and established the position of "international currency". II. Establishment of the early modern monetary system In 1601, prior to establishment of the Shogunte (1603), Tokugawa Ieyasu put the gold and silver mine in Sado under his direct rule, succeeding in monopolizing the monetary sovereignty. Tokugawa Shogunate issued several kinds of gold coins in tail and silver coins in weight. The aim of its policy was to establish the monetary system based on gold coin. With the issue of gold and silver coins, the Shogunate determined the exchange rate between three kinds of metals including copper, that is ; 1 ryo of gold=4,000 mon of copper coin=50 monme of silver. We must point out that the exchange rate between gold and copper coin was set favorably to gold, since in actual transaction at that time 1 ryo of gold was roughly equivalent to 1,500mon of copper coins. The Shogunate intended to consolidate its financial position by raising the relative value of gold it succeeded to monopolize. In medieval Japan only copper coins were exclusively used for payment. In this sense we might call the medieval monetary system "single copper coin system". In contrast to this, Tokugawa Shogunate got the monopolistic right of coinage and established the early modern monetary system based on gold.