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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible that it could be related to change needing to be weighed to be determined legitimate, or simply as a way of measuring the amount? (like paying with gold dust in the Yukon or what have you)

Beyond that I can see it being a result of extreme cultural stratification, as the article touches on - that it would be seen as demeaning for a higher-class person to put money directly into the lower-class person's hand.

It's quite interesting that no one has any clear idea! I love little mysteries like this.

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Most books I've read that talk about this custom (and, despite the claims of the article that it's not talked about, in Western literature it's talked about A LOT) attribute it instead to the idea that money is "impure", and handing money directly to another person (whatever the class relation) is a bit improper.

That's a fascinating idea: they may have evolved from a weigh pan. As a protocol it makes sense: bring the customer the weigh pan and then put it straight on the scale. The customer can see you didn't manipulate the pan and both of you can see the result of the weigh.

This same procedure could explain the origin of similar usage in other countries.

Well you hit on a good point, the need to be wary of counterfeit currency. There were disincentives to using gold and silver in daily usage. The golden koban coins (Ryo), as well as silver and brass coins, formed the official Edo period currency. However, the amount of gold used in minting koban declined over time, and there were also regional, unofficially minted koban, so it would have been relatively straightforward to try to create counterfeit koban. In addition, Spanish silver dollars were used unofficially, despite not being the official currency. The actual value of all these coins could fluctuate on a seasonal or even daily basis, and was tied into the price of rice. All of these are reasons to not deal with exchanging metals for daily transactions, hence the prevalence of credit-based transactions.

Weighed as in with a scale? Possibly historically this might have been a concern or a mechanism to check for counterfeits, but currently the change and bills are placed in the same, non-measured, tray. It's just a generic plastic tray, and it varies from shop to shop.

Customs have this odd thing about living on way beyond its practical use.

The article says that during 1600-1870 most businesses operated on credit with semiannual account settlement. I'd think this would make quick-weigh gold-dust transactions pretty uncommon. :)

But it would support the idea that handling money is improper.

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