linguoboy wrote:Yasna wrote:The part in red and white is an upside down 福, meaning "fortune".
And it's upside down because in Chinese 福倒 "fortune upside-down" sounds like 福到 "fortune arrives".
And it's red because red is supposed to be auspicious AFAIK. You see these a lot during Chinese New Year. (Speaking of which, happy Chinese New Year!).
OldBoring wrote:And now I've learnt that 両 is a (historical?) variant for the character 两/兩 in Chinese.
It's
shinjitai, i.e. a Japanese simplified character. Like the Chinese, the Japanese also simplified some of their Chinese characters, but sometimes, they did not do this the same way the Chinese did (nor did they go as far with it AFAIK). For example, 'to sell' is 賣 in traditional Chinese (and used to be this way in Japanese as well) and is now 卖 in simplified but has a completely different form 売 in
shinjitai.
So in ancient Japan currency was also called 両?
Yes, that was an old Japanese coin.