1 Bu Hyōgo Port Development

Hyōgo port — modern Kobe — was forcibly opened to foreign trade in January 1868 under the terms of the 1858 Ansei Treaties, and local merchant financing of the harbor expansion created a brief need for small-denomination scrip that could function outside the existing han currency systems. The bu was already a fractional unit under pressure: the Meiji transition would abolish it entirely within a few years of this note's issue.

The extreme elongation of the format is characteristic of Edo-period Japanese paper money conventions, derived directly from the proportions of traditional tanzaku strips rather than any Western banking influence.