1 Yen

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.