koban
koban noun: an oval gold coin in the Edo period of feudal Japan.
Noun (1)
koban (plural koban or kobans)
- An oval gold coin in the Edo period of feudal Japan.
- Every landlord hath two koban paid him for dinner, and three for supper and lodgings at night.1906, Ernest W[ilson] Clement, editor, Hildreth’s “Japan as it Was and Is”: A Handbook of Old Japan, volume II, Chicago, Ill.: A. C. McClurg & Co., page 40
- “Shall we say two koban for this evening—a measure of my desire to please a Lady of such merit?”1975, James Clavell, Shōgun: A Novel of Japan, volume 2, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, page 620
Noun (2)
koban (plural koban or kobans)
- A small community police office or a police box, especially one in Japan.
- Personnel of kobans change each shift; they report for duty at a police station and fan out to the kobans.1976, David H. Bayley, Forces of Order: Police Behavior in Japan and the United States, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, published 1978, →ISBN, page 13
Forms of koban
| plural | koban |
|---|---|
| plural | kobans |
| alternative form | cobang |
| alternative form | coebang |
| alternative form | kobang |
Origin of koban
Borrowed from Japanese 小判(こばん) (koban).
Borrowed from Japanese 交番(こうばん) (kōban).
Questions about koban
- What does koban mean?
- Koban means an oval gold coin in the Edo period of feudal Japan.
- What part of speech is koban?
- Koban is a noun.
- What is the plural of koban?
- The plural of koban is koban.
Words near koban in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: koban (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “koban.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/koban. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.