1 Monme Nara

This note was issued by the Nara Exchange Office (奈良為替会所), one of dozens of short-lived regional exchange bureaus that proliferated across Japan in the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate. These offices were authorized to issue their own paper money — hansatsu — as the central government's grip on monetary affairs weakened. The monme was a silver weight unit, not a coin denomination, which meant the note's value floated against actual bullion rather than a fixed metallic standard.

The bureau at Nara was dissolved within a few years of the Meiji Restoration, and its notes were recalled and demonetized as the new government moved to consolidate currency issuance. Surviving examples are scarce partly because redemption was enforced aggressively in the early 1870s.