File:Hidari koma - Dr. Luke Roberts 01.png

English: Here is a Japanese charm. it is called a hidari koma, which means "pony going left." It has no words but is a humorous view of a man and his packhorse. Somehow the man seems to be losing.

There is the possibility that what I describe as a man is a monkey. Monkey and horse coins are also quite common. A complicated system of beliefs about the various animals' relations to the five elements of earth, fire, wood, water and metal, makes such coins protection for a horse's health. 24mm wide x 1mm thick

Here is another hidari koma but it was made by directly carving the image into a Kan'ei tsuuhou coin. The original coin is probably a type from around 1714 called a "shukuji haibun muhai" which means that it is a later version of the 1660's "bunsen" which had no bun character on the back, but I am not sure. This was found in Java, and the carving of the coininto a charm is likely to have been done in Java (I have seen another Kan'ei tsuuhou similarly carved with two Javanese dancer images.). It was improperly cleaned with an abrasive, which makes it look very new but the corrosion in the bridle and the lines of the rear right legetc. suggests that the carving is not that recent.

25.5mm wide x 1mm thick.