Yen

Yen is the currency used in Japan. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the United States Dollar and Euro. In Japanese it is usually pronounced "en", but the pronunciation "yen" is standard in English. The ISO 4217 codes for the yen are JPY and 392. The Latinised symbol is ¥, while in Japanese it is written with the kanji 円.

History

The yen was introduced by the Meiji government in 1872 as a system resembling those in Europe; yen replaced the overly complex monetary system of the Edo period. The New Currency Act of 1871 stipulated the adoption of the decimal accounting system of yen (1, 圓), sen (1/100, 錢), and rin (1/1000, 厘), with the coins being round and cast as in the West. (The sen and the rin were eventually taken out of circulation in 1954.) While not a unit of official currency, for large quantities of yen the abbreviaton man (which means "ten thousand") is used, in the same way as values in the United States are often quoted or rounded off to thousands (given the yen's smaller value, it is much more common). The yen was legally defined as 0.8667 troy ounces (26.956 g) of silver. The Act also moved Japan onto the Gold Standard.

Related Topics:
Meiji - Europe - Edo period - 1871 - 1954 - United States - Troy ounces - Gold Standard

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The yen was pegged at 1 US dollar = ¥360 from April 25, 1949, to until 1971 when the Bretton Woods system collapsed and the value of the Yen began to float. As of August 2005, there are about ¥110 to the US dollar, about ¥135 to the Euro, and about ¥199 to the pound sterling. After the Plaza Accord of 1985, the yen appreciated against the dollar. Japan has become so used to the appreciation, it has coined the term endaka, or appreciation of the yen, and has employed the Bank of Japan to intervene to reduce its value, a tactic recently copied by much the rest of the Far East.

Related Topics:
US dollar - April 25 - 1949 - 1971 - Bretton Woods system - As of August 2005 - Euro - Pound sterling - Plaza Accord - 1985 - Endaka - Bank of Japan

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The yen was originally written in the same way in Kanji as the yuan (圓 pinyin yuán), the Chinese unit for currency. Modern Japanese writings now use a character (円) which is different from the one commonly used (as shorthand) in Chinese (元). The Latinized symbol for the Yen however, is identical to the one for the Renminbi, although the PRC tends to use one crossbar instead of two.

Related Topics:
Yuan - Pinyin - Chinese - Renminbi - PRC

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Yen literally means a "round object" in Japanese, as it does in Chinese.

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The spelling and pronunciation with the letter y are based on romanization of an obsolete writing of the word. The same combination occurs in words such as Uyeda, Yebisu, Iyeyasu and Inouye. Like the spellings of names of people outside Japan, the romanization of yen has become a permanent feature.

Related Topics:
Romanization - Yebisu

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