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At the Beginning...
"Money" that is used every day in the world, and supports the modern society.
Since everyone uses it every day, I think most people feel that money is very familier with us.
However, few people know about its history and structure of money.
What do you hit on when you hear “the role of money”? I think that many people think "to buy things". However, there are many roles.
For example, here are two lumps of meat.
We can’t recognize which is more delicious without eating. However, it is easy to recognize which is more delicious when prices are set to each meat. If there are prices, we can tell the value of the things (of course we can’t understand the value of the thing if pricing is inappropriate. This is explained in Economy page.)
Thus, money can index the value of things.
Who decides value of money? WE do.
For example, it is said that a big lump of gold falls into the ground. Almost all people will pick it up. However, how about other animals? They will not show much interest.
This is because we human beings admit that a lump of gold has value. Thsi is same in money. The value is born to money simply because we recognize money as a valuable thing and trust it. If we do not trust money, money is just little things. In addition, it is inconvenient for carrying around even if the lump of gold understands that there is value. Therefore the shape of money continues changing by the passage of times and becomes the current form.
When was money born? In Japan in Jomon period, hunting life was accomplished. However, naturally deflection may be given to the animal which we can hunt. As a method of business used in such a case, we changed things and things not money directly, and a method called "bartering" begins.
Meanwhile, in about the Nara era, money came to be spent for the first time in Japan. We'll explain about it in History in detail.
We are glad if you can know "money" more deeply through this site!
