Currency in Japan

The name of the Japanese currency unit can be taken for coin in any way. The Yen designation refers straight away to a “round object”. In international financial transactions, however, the yen is listed with the ISO currency code JPY and the code number 392. Based on the meaning, the Japanese currency carrier ranks higher on the list and, along with the US dollar and the euro, is one of the primary means of payment in global financial transactions. There it is usually abbreviated with the symbol ¥.

The yen is the official currency in Japan and is used in everyday money by over 125 million people. In addition, the international scope of a currency can be determined based on its use as a reserve currency. Accordingly, the yen, with a share of 6-8% of currency reserves deposited worldwide, also has a high degree of internationalization.

History of the currency Yen

With the yen as the official currency, the first decimal currency system was introduced in Japan in 1871, after Europe had assumed a role model function for the design of financial transactions. The subdivisions into Sen and Rin are no longer relevant in the present. The gold standard was then introduced in Japan in 1897, but had to be finally discontinued due to the First World War and the successive stock market crash of 1929. In the subsequent structural vacuum of World War II, the yen was finally pegged to the US dollar at a ratio of 1: 360. In the years of the new beginning, however, rigid domestic financial structures and initial difficulties with convertibility and foreign attention ensured that the yen’s successful course did not begin until the 1980’s.

The expansive growth of the Japanese economy and the immense accumulation of currency reserves ultimately opened the doors to the international financial market for the Asian island nation. With the successive appreciation of the yen, however, a real estate and speculative bubble also formed on the Japanese markets, which burst in 1990 and resulted in a lightning loss in value. This event drove the domestic economy into deep recession and the yen into long-term and steady depreciation through February 2002.

The current exchange rate between yen and euro (as of 07/10/2012) is 102: 1 and brings 102 yen in return for every euro exchanged.

Exchange of currency

However, when exchanging this currency, you should not expect to receive this exact amount as all relevant institutions charge a fee. This can vary from time to time and only allows one recommendation for changing cash: If possible, not at barter stalls near tourist attractions.