The Japanese circulating medium was found to consist of old kas, round, with a square hole in the middle, like the Chinese cash, but thinner, and containing more iron; of four-kas pieces, in weight equal to less than two of the others, probably, Kämpfer’s double zeni; but principally of a new coin rated at one hundred kas,—apparently a substitute for the strings of kas mentioned by Kämpfer and others. These are oval-shaped pieces of copper, about the size and shape of a longitudinal section of an egg, introduced within a recent period, and weighing only as much as seven of the old kas (or, compared with our cents, a little less than two of them). This over-valuation has, of course, driven the old kas out of circulation, and made this depreciated coin the integer of the currency. At the same time, it has raised the nominal value of everything, as is evident in the case of silver and gold. Instead of one thousand kas to the tael of silver, the rate in former times, the government, which appears to have the monopoly of the mines, sells silver bullion for manufacturing use at two thousand two hundred and fifty kas for the tael,—a rate fixed probably under some less depreciated state of the currency. But when coined, a tael’s weight of silver is reckoned in currency at six thousand four hundred kas, that is, at six tael and four mas, or precisely the valuation, in Kämpfer’s time, of the gold koban; and as the ichibu of his day, that is, _one fourth part_, as the word signifies in Japanese, represented sixteen hundred kas in real weight of silver, so the ichibu of the present day, of which there is both a silver and a gold one, represents sixteen hundred kas of currency. The bullion price of gold in Japan is only eight and a half times that of silver instead of sixteen times, as with us; while in currency the difference in value is only about as one to three and a half, the price in silver, or copper hundred-kas pieces, of a tael’s weight of gold bullion being nineteen taels, and the same when coined passing as twenty-three taels, seven mas and five kanderin. Besides the gold ichibu, the Japanese are represented as having three other gold coins, thin, oval pieces, of the currency value respectively of one, ten, and twenty taels;[126] also a coin, made of gold and silver, worth half an ichibu, or eight hundred-kas pieces, and a small silver piece, worth a quarter of an ichibu, or four hundred-kas pieces.