In 1853 during Emperor Komei'™s rule, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States sailed into Edo Bay with his four war ships demanding Japan do business with the West. This split Japan in half; those that wanted commerce with the rest of the world and the Tokugawa Shogun, who wanted things to stay the same.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was a military dictatorship that had experienced relative peace within Japan for over 250 years. They had achieved this by freezing the social order and prohibiting mobility between the classes and ran the country with the use of the Samurai. These rectangular coins were minted during the last years of this 250 year reign, which ended with the death of Emperor Komei in 1868.