e days' sustenance.**

*The ideograph sen signified originally a "fountain," and its
employment to designate a coin seems to have been suggested by an
idea analogous to that underlying the English word "currency."

**"At the present time the wages of a carpenter are almost a yen a
day. Now the yen is equal to 1000 mon of the smaller sen and to 500
mon of the larger ones, so that he could have provided himself with
rice, if we count only 500 mon to the yen, for sixteen years on the
wages which he receives for one day's labour in 1900." (Munro's Coins
of Japan.)

Much difficulty was experienced in weaning the people from their old
custom of barter and inducing them to use coins. The Government seems
to have recognized that there could not be any effective spirit of
economy so long as perishable goods represented the standard of
value, and in order to popularize the use of the new tokens as well
as to encourage thrift, it was decreed that grades of rank would be
bestowed upon men who had saved certain sums in coin. At that time
(711), official salaries had already been fixed in terms of the Wado
sen. The highest received thirty pieces of cloth, one hundred hanks
of silk and two thousand mon, while in the case of an eighth-class
official the corresponding figures were one piece of cloth and twenty
mon.* The edict for promoting economy embodied a schedule according
to which, broadly speaking, two steps of executive rank could be
gained by amassing twenty thousand mon and one step by saving five
thousand.

*These figures sound ludicrously small if translated into present-day
money, for 1000 mon go to the yen, and the latter being the
equivalent of two shillings, 20 mon represents less then a
half-penny. But of course the true calculation is that 20 mon
represented 240 days' rations of rice in the Wado schedule of values.

Observing that the fundamental principle of a sound token of exchange
was wholly disregarded in these Wado sen, since their intrinsic value
bore no appreciable ratio to their purchasing power, and considering
also the crudeness of their manufacture, it is not surprising to find
that within a few months of their appearance they were extensively
forged. What is much more notable is that the Wado sen remained in
circulation for fifty years. The extraordinary ratio, however, by
which copper and silver were linked together originally, namely, 4 to
1, did not survive; in 721 it was changed to 25 to 10, and i