1 Kan Mon Kagoshima Domain

Kagoshima Domain — the political base of the Satsuma han — issued this note during one of the most consequential years in Japanese history. The Meiji Restoration was underway, and Satsuma had been central to the coalition that toppled the Tokugawa shogunate. Domain-issued paper currency (hansatsu) had circulated in Japan since the late seventeenth century, but by 1868 the new imperial government was already moving to suppress it — hansatsu were formally abolished in 1871 under the currency unification laws that preceded the creation of the yen.

Any note from this domain and this year was functionally obsolete within three years of issue.