Japanese Military Currency Research

Military currency is a special kind of money that Japanese government issues to finance its war. It circulates in the occupied area of Japanese army and at first has to be exchanged for Japanese yen for usage when circulated back to Japan. The Japanese army can use military currency to pay for anything except for military expenditure. More specifically, in the occupied area issues like collecting grain, cloth, employing local people to construct shelters, transportation and supplying goods are all paid in military currency. It is also an important weapon for attacking legal money by Japanese government in the anti-Japanese war period.The first attempt by Japanese government to use military currency was during the Sino-Japanese War. When Japanese Ministry of Finance put forward the proposal to issue military currency, the war nearly ended and Qing government sued for peace. So the military currency was not used in large scale in that period and only used by Japanese army when they invaded Taiwan. And Japanese governement issued military currency in the following aggressive wars, including Russo-Japanese war, aggression of Qingdao in the name of war against Germany, aggression of Siberia, Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War etc.In the wars before 1937 the military currency was only used for collecting invoice certificate like"expenditures except for salaries of officers and soldiers of army". And when the Sino-Japanese War changed into protracted war from November 1938 to April 1943, the military currency was used as general currency in the Japanese occupied area in the request of Chinese expeditionary force. This was the peak period in the history of Japanese military currency.The biggest share of the quantity of military currency was issued in China in the history of Japanese military currency. Before anti-Japanese war China used silver as the basic currency and Japanese army used its military currency freely. In November 1935, the former national goverment performed legal money reform and China broke it away from era of metal currency. This equipped China with tools to combat with Japanese military currency. And the legal currency kept its intrinsic value even in the worst time due to various reasons. It was a big fortune for China but nightmare for Japanese military currency.Japanese amry took various measures in order to try to keep the value of its military currency and consolidate its status as the general currency in the Japanese occupied area in the anti-Japanese war period. But due to the bolck by Chinese legal currency and the scarcity of Japanese resources, Japan cannot keep the value of military currency stable and finally stopped its usage.