(after Showa 22 - read left to right)

The date is divided into three sections:-

1 - The NENGO, or Reign Era. This consists of two characters (KANJI) which may be written in any order indicating the name for the era and the name of the Emperor. It is not a requirement that the era name follows the same dates as the actual reign.

2 - The characters for the number of years since the era started. This can be one, two, or three characters. One character would be a simple number from one to ten (or the character 'gan' meaning 'first'). Two characters would be a number of years from 11 to 19 (e.g. 10+1 thru' 10+9) or '20', '30', '40' etc. (e.g. (2 x 10), (3 x 10), (4 x 10) etc. Three characters would be any number from 21 (2 x 10 + 1) onwards (except for whole 'tens' e.g. '30', '40', etc.)

3 - One final character called 'nen' which means 'year'.

Here is a list of 'NENGO' for the period from 1868 to date

MUTSUHITO (MEIJI ERA) 1868 (Year 1)		Ended in 1912 (Year 45)
YOSHIHITO (TAISHO ERA)Commenced 1912 (Year 1)		Ended 1926 (year 15)
HIROHITO (SHOWA ERA)Commenced 1926 (Year 1)		Ended 1989 (year 64)
AKIHITO (HEISEI ERA)Commenced 1989 (Year 1)		Continuing

Now the numerals

AND FINALLY............the NEN character for 'year'

NEXT - The VALUE

When the value is not written in Western script or numerals, use the following characters to identify the value.

Lastly - The COUNTRY

It is customary on Japanese coinage to include the statement 'Dai Nippon' meaning 'Great Japan' as below...remember - read right to left.

Here is an example

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