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Answerman - Why Does Rock-Paper-Scissors Come Up In Anime So Much?

As I said above, in old times in Japan, of course, there were also smaller round coins of which values were lower.
If you read/watch Japanese works set in Japan in old times more, you may be able to see those smaller round coins with a square hole.

Japanese money under the shogunate is apparently completely crazy-complex, but as far as I understand it:
+ the bakufu kept their accounts in rice, koku, which meant the domains had to too for tax-assessment purposes ["kept their accounts in" -> the valuing process meant that things-of-value were equated to an equivalent value in rice.]
+ in edo, the circulating medium-of-exchange was the gold ryou, which floated around parity to the rice koku. One ryou -- a gold "koban" coin, although there were larger denominations -- was a seriously large sum of money; a koku was enough rice to feed a man for a year, and food was more expensive back then. [at meiji, the money system was revised with the yen replacing the ryou at parity... there's been some inflation since then].
+ in osaka, where the trades were smaller, the circulating medium was lump silver by weight, which floated relative to both the koku and the ryou.
+ as is usually the case in these sorts of societies, the small-change situation was terrible beyond measure, largely made up of aged and worn chinese cash-style bronze coins imported long ago and small numbers of local copies. In theory these floated too, but in reality they probably passed as token/nominal-value money.

+ in reality japan had a reasonably-functional banking system and most large transactions were in paper. I don't think that the japanese had a system equivalent to the english quarter-days [where transactions were denominated in money but logged, and only netted up and settled four times a year], so I don't know how stable rural societies dealt with petty transactions given that the small-change situation was even worse than england.

Maybe, but I can still think of actual sports that I think are less interesting to watch.

I've been told that tournaments are a rather tense affair. For a human to manually produce an arbitrarily large and seemingly random set of values—without inadvertently creating any discernible patterns while doing so—must take its toll on their mental constitution.

...the game is still known as "Roshambo" in Europe...

Interesting. I've seen those coins with the square holes in them, and I even have a few, but nearly all depictions I've seen of them associate them with China rather than Japan (and the ones I have are Chinese). Of course, I watch TV and movies from all over the world.

I've seen those coins with the square holes in them, and I even have a few,

Game companies in the US have used a good imitation of those coins as score counters in Mahjong sets. If the ones you have don't look terribly old that may be the source.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Quote:

I've seen those coins with the square holes in them, and I even have a few,

Game companies in the US have used a good imitation of those coins as score counters in Mahjong sets. If the ones you have don't look terribly old that may be the source.

Nah, these look incredibly aged and a bit rusted.