This soroban, or Japanese abacus, belonged to The Japanese House. The Japanese soroban differs from the Chinese abacus in that it only has one row of beads on top, resulting in a slightly different calculation system. The soroban is made of wood (frame and back), housing 15 metal rods on which wooden counting beads are strung. The numbers have been carved on (decimal digit indicators), and the back features an advertisement with a phone number and a metal plate to convert the Japanese system to the metric system. It originally comes from a transportation company in the Nishijin District of Kyoto.
