Coins and commerce in classical Japanstored them away.^22 On the other hand, the spread of counterfeit coins was a problem from the
onset, prompting the state to establish especially severe provisions against counterfeiting and
issue the death penalty to ringleaders.^23
That the Wadō kaichin spread throughout the Kinai region (containing the capital) and its
environs can be gleaned from the state demanding coins as tax payment from the area. The coins
circulated despite the fact that unlike the in- kind currencies in use up until that time, the govern-
ment had unilaterally assigned an artificially high value to the copper coins. Why, then, did the
coinage become accepted as a currency and go on to circulate throughout society in and around
the capital?
This can be explained in part by the various policies enacted by the state to force the use of the
new coinage. For example, in the tenth month of 712, the government ordered that the laborers
and carriers coming into the capital from various districts be made to carry copper coins upon
their return, and that in the districts along the roads, officials provision the returning workers
with local rice in exchange for the coins they carried.^24 In other words, the state adopted policies
that made district magistrates (gunji) and other regional elites supply rice in exchange for copper
coins. By forcing the elite families of the countryside to collect the copper coins in the hands of
corvée laborers traveling back and forth from the capital, and to shoulder the in- kind cost of
provisioning them, the state expected that the use of the new currency would extend to the fam-
ilies themselves. Thus out in the provinces, district offices acted as nodes of currency
distribution.
Additionally, the central role played by the temples of Heijō-kyō in promoting the use of
coinage should not be overlooked. In the second volume of the early- Heian work Nihon ryōiki,
Japan’s oldest compendium of Buddhist didactic tales, there is a story set in the Nara period
during the time of Emperor Shōmu (r. 724–749).^25 According to this tale, a resident of Heijō-kyō
by the name of Nara Iwashima borrowed thirty kan of copper coins (30,000 coins) from the state-
sponsored temple Daianji. From Heijō-kyō he traveled to Tsuruga harbor in Echizen (present-
day Tsuruga City in Fukui prefecture), where he conducted trade at the port and made a profit.
Although historically inaccurate, the story does suggest that the temples of the capital and the
surrounding areas possessed copper coins in large sums, and that they generally made use of them
for trade. Among the documents maintained in the Shosōin repository at Tōdaiji is a loan applica-
tion drafted when the temple lent out five kan of copper coins (5,000 coins) as “shōsen” (literally
“dealing coins”). Ostensibly this indicated that the coins were to be used for trade, and it appears
that the use of temple- held coins for this purpose was actually being encouraged.^26 This is also
made clear by the conclusion of the tale introduced above, which declared that “Nara Iwashima,
owing to his borrowing of shōsen from the temple and conducting trade, was able to avert
death.”^27
The temples of Heijō-kyō thus actively encouraged using the coins in their possession for
commerce, and this in turn promoted the use of coinage in the capital. A significant number of
the extant materials in the Shōsoin collection indicate that the economic life of the temple could
not have been established without coins. Among these are an account book showing that coins
acted as a means of exchange in the financial management of sutra- copying services, and the deed
of a loan for pupils engaged in such services.^28
By the latter half of the Nara period, the increase in the number of issuances and the spread
of counterfeit coins had brought about an inflation of commodity prices and a corresponding
fall in the value of coinage. In response, the state struck the Mannen tsūhō in 760, and assigned
the new coinage ten times the value of the Wadō kaichin. Issued concurrently were the Kaiki
shōhō, gold coins set at one thousand times the value of the Wadō kaichin, and the Taihei genpō,
silver coins given one hundred times their value. An entry from the same day stated that “at