Japanese yen
The yen (Japanese: 円, symbol: ¥; code: JPY) is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar and the euro.[2] It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro.
"Yen" redirects here. For other uses, see Yen (disambiguation).
The New Currency Act of 1871 introduced Japan's modern currency system, with the yen defined as 1.5 g (0.048 troy ounces) of gold, or 24.26 g (0.780 troy ounces) of silver, and divided decimally into 100 sen or 1,000 rin. The yen replaced the previous Tokugawa coinage as well as the various hansatsu paper currencies issued by feudal han (fiefs). The Bank of Japan was founded in 1882 and given a monopoly on controlling the money supply.[3]
Following World War II, the yen lost much of its prewar value. To stabilize the Japanese economy, the exchange rate of the yen was fixed at ¥360 per US$ as part of the Bretton Woods system. When that system was abandoned in 1971, the yen became undervalued and was allowed to float. The yen had appreciated to a peak of ¥271 per US$ in 1973, then underwent periods of depreciation and appreciation due to the 1973 oil crisis, arriving at a value of ¥227 per US$ by 1980.
Since 1973, the Japanese government has maintained a policy of currency intervention, so the yen is under a "dirty float" regime. The Japanese government focused on a competitive export market, and tried to ensure a low exchange rate for the yen through a trade surplus. The Plaza Accord of 1985 temporarily changed this situation; the exchange rate fell from its average of ¥239 per dollar in 1985 to ¥128 in 1988 and led to a peak rate of ¥80 against the US$ in 1995, effectively increasing the value of Japan's GDP in dollar terms to almost that of the United States.[4]
Since that time, however, the world price of the yen has greatly decreased, falling to an average of almost ¥150 per dollar in November 2023 (before recovering a little).[5] The Bank of Japan maintains a policy of zero to near-zero interest rates and the Japanese government has previously had a strict anti-inflation policy.[6] From late 2021 to late 2023, the yen depreciated against the dollar by about 40%,[7][5] giving rise to serious concern in Japan about long-term prospects for the currency.[8][9][10] However, this weakness has had some benefits for Japan's tourism industry, as the low exchange rate makes its purchasing power attractive for travellers, particularly those from foreign nations.[11][12]
Pronunciation and etymology[edit]
The name, "Yen", derives from the Japanese word 圓 (en, [eɴ]; "round"), which borrows its phonetic reading from Chinese yuan, similar to North Korean won and South Korean won. Originally, the Chinese had traded silver in mass called sycees, and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived from the Philippines, the Chinese called them "silver rounds" (Chinese: 銀圓; pinyin: yínyuán) for their circular shapes.[13] The coins and the name also appeared in Japan. While the Chinese eventually replaced 圆; 圓 with 元,[a] the Japanese continued to use the same word, which was given the shinjitai form 円 in reforms at the end of World War II.
The spelling and pronunciation "yen" is standard in English, because when Japan was first encountered by Europeans around the 16th century, Japanese /e/ (え) and /we/ (ゑ) both had been pronounced [je] and Portuguese missionaries had spelled them "ye".[b] By the middle of the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced [e] as in modern Japanese, although some regions retain the [je] pronunciation. Walter Henry Medhurst, who had neither been to Japan nor met any Japanese people, having consulted mainly a Japanese-Dutch dictionary, spelled some "e"s as "ye" in his An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary (1830).[15] In the early Meiji era, James Curtis Hepburn, following Medhurst, spelled all "e"s as "ye" in his A Japanese and English dictionary (1867); in Japanese, e and i are slightly palatalized, somewhat as in Russian.[16] That was the first full-scale Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, which had a strong influence on Westerners in Japan and probably prompted the spelling "yen". Hepburn revised most "ye"s to "e" in the 3rd edition (1886)[17] to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen".[18]