1 Monme Tsurajima

Tsurajima was a small trading post settlement in Bitchū Province, and like dozens of similar han and merchant communities in late Edo Japan, it issued its own paper currency to ease local exchange when metallic coinage was chronically scarce. These domain and sub-domain notes — broadly called hansatsu — were legally sanctioned under Tokugawa fiscal arrangements that permitted local authorities to print against commodity or land backing, though enforcement of that backing was inconsistent at best.

The monme denomination ties this note directly to silver-weight reckoning, the dominant accounting system in western Japan. By 1847, the shogunate's own finances were badly strained, and confidence in centralized currency was eroding — fertile ground for local paper to fill the gap.