Commercial

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War 1904 - 1905

Daitôsenso 1941 - 1945

Japanese Invasion money Burma (Myanmar) 1942-44

for more info and images of the American
Occupation years in Japan follow this link

George & Paula Blessing's Homepage

see what people wrote on the cards

The 1923 great quake

There was foreboding in Japan on September 1, 1923. September 2 would be the Two-Hundred-Tenth-day, counting from the day in early February when spring is held to begin. Awaited each year with apprehension, it comes during the typhoon season and the harvest. The conjunction of the two, harvest and typhoon, can mean disaster.
The disaster of that year came instead on September 1.

The morning was warm, heavy, as most days of late summer are, with the shrilling of locusts. The mugginess was somewhat relieved by brisk winds, which shifted from east to south at about nine.
A low pressure zone covered the the southern part of the Kantô Plain, on the fringes where the city lies.
The winds became stronger as the morning drew on. Rain fell, stopping at eleven. The skies cleared.

The city was awaiting the 'don' , the 'bang' of the cannon which since since 1871 had been fired at noon every day in the palace plaza.
At one minute and fifteen and four-tenths seconds before noon, the great earthquake struck.
The initial shocks were so violent that seismographs at the Central Wheather Bureau went out of commission.
The surviving seismograph at Tokyo Imperial University made the only detailed record of the long series of quakes, more than seventeen hundred over the next three days. The epicenter was in Sagami Bay, southeast of the city.

- © Edward Seidensticker - Low City, High City / Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: how the shogun's ancient capital became a great modern city, 1867 - 1923
Alfred A. Knopf - New York - 1983 -

Japanese Pre WWII Banknotes

1 Japanese Yen 1916 10 Japanese Yen 1930

50 Japanese Sen 1938

These Pre War Japanese Banknotes are not in my possession. I 'borrowed' these images with the kind permission of Ron Wise.
If you're interested in banknotes from all over the world - please visit his site, which by the way is very impressive !

Ron Wise's World Paper Money Homepage

Yoshiwara

Yoshiwara was an area on the outskirts of Tokyo (Edo), where prostitution was contained and regulated in a graduated hierarchy until 1957. This containment was literal, the district was fenced in by real walls and a moat as well as government regulation.
The "Yoshiwara" licensed quarters officially opened in the eleventh month of 1618.
The name "Yoshiwara" came from the area itself, it means "field of rushes", a marshy place - during the years that followed, "Yoshiwara" burned down several times because of the wooden houses.

On the left picture we see five "oiran" or high ranking courtesans attended by their "kamuro" (child attendants).
The courtesans wore luxurious kimono, their hair style was very elaborate and they walked on very high wooden clogs.

For more on this subject: "Yoshiwara - The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan" by Cecilia Segawa Seigle
University of Hawaii Press