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1 Yen
| Issuer | Great Imperial Japanese Government (Dai Nippon Teikoku Seifu Shihei) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1881 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | The obverse is printed in red-brown tones with an intricate design typical of Meiji-era government notes. At centre, the denomination 壹圓 (One Yen) appears within an ornate oval guilloche medallion, flanked to the left by a circular seal medallion bearing the characters 大蔵卿 and to the right by an oval vignette of a Western-styled female portrait in intaglio. The Imperial chrysanthemum crest is positioned above the central denomination panel, with Japanese text inscriptions running along the upper and lower borders. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 出納局長 |
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| Comments |
The Dai Nippon Teikoku Seifu Shihei series of which this note is part emerged from a period of acute fiscal stress — the Meiji government had been printing inconvertible paper currency since the early 1870s to fund the suppression of samurai rebellions, most critically the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, which alone cost roughly 42 million yen. By 1881, inflation had badly eroded public confidence in government paper.
Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi's deflationary program, launched that same year, would eventually retire much of this currency from circulation through forced redemption. Survivors are disproportionately notes that left Japan entirely — held by foreign merchants or diplomats — before the redemption campaigns took hold.