Fundo ?

[Lee Bray]

 

Is this a Japanese fundo?

I came by it in Hong Kong several years ago and assumed it was a large, Chinese paper weight or scale weight. Recently, though, I saw a tsuba on RichT's blog which pictured a set of fundo which are identical in shape.

It's made of either brass or bronze and weighs 1115.7g so doesn't correlate with any Japanese weight units. I believe 2 kin weigh 1.2kg and although it's had a few divots taken out of it, it's a bit of a stretch to think it's lost 84.3g...although it could have belonged to an unscrupulous merchant who liked light weights...(who ever heard of such a thing )

There also appear to be 3 or 4 kanji/hanzi on the top. Too much abuse to read them but the top could be Kin.

 

Thanks for any information.

[k morita]

Hi,

I don't understand Japanese Fundo weight or Hongkong Fundo.

But, Japanese units of weight "Momme" is an international standard of pearl weight.

 

Maybe,300 Momme weight,Fundo.

One momme is 3.75g

Therefore, 1115.7g / 3.75g = 297.52 momme, nearly equal 300 momme.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_u ... easurement

[Lee Bray]

Thanks, Morita-san.

A wear and tear loss of ~8g is not so much of a stretch including scale differences.

 

Fundo 分銅

Taken from RichT's site.

http://kodogunosekai.com/

[Lee Bray]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%E5%B ... 8A%851.jpg

 

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95% ... -hundo.jpg

 

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95% ... undo10.jpg

 

Seems they were used by the Goto family as currency exchange weights.

A tad more interesting than weighing out sprouts.

 

Morita-san, you were spot on with the 300 momme guess. The article lists the largest weight at 1124.27g so 1115.7g is not far off.