What is "koban"

Etymology 1 n. An oval gold coin in the Edo period of feudal Japan. Etymology 2

n. A small community police office or a police box, especially one in Japan.

A is a small neighborhood police station found in Japan. Kōban also refers to the smallest organizational unit in today's Japanese police system. In addition to central police stations, Japanese uniformed police work is done from small buildings located within the community, a form of community policing. , there are about 6,000 kōban all over Japan. Since the 1990s, many of them are found with signs in Roman letters: "Koban".

Koban may refer to:

• , Japanese neighborhood police substation, sometimes called a " police box"

• , a former Japanese oval gold coin

• Koban culture, a Central North Caucasian culture circa 1100 to 400 BC

The was a Japanese oval gold coin in Edo period feudal Japan, equal to one ryō, another early Japanese monetary unit. It was a central part of Tokugawa coinage.

The Keichō era koban, a gold piece, contained about one ryō of gold, so that koban carried a face value of one ryō. However, successive mintings of the koban had varying (usually diminishing) amounts of gold. As a result, the ryō as a unit of weight of gold and the ryō as the face value of the koban were no longer synonymous.