Catalog
1 Yen 'Daikoku'
| Issuer | Bank of Japan |
|---|---|
| Year | 1885 |
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| Engraver(s) | Edoardo Chiossone |
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| Obverse description | Light-blue underprint with black intaglio inscriptions and red seals; group and serial numbers in black. The vignette at right presents Daikoku, the god of fortune, facing forward, holding a gavel in his right hand and a sack of riches over his left shoulder, seated atop two bales of rice with three mice below; a radiant sun appears at the top. A central cartouche contains the reverse design of a contemporary 1 Yen coin, flanked by repeating vertical inscriptions in Chinese seal script reading 壹圓兌換銀券 alternating with ONE YEN in Roman lettering. The Governor's seal of the Bank of Japan, in Chinese seal script within a decorated circle, appears at left, while the Director of Document Department's seal, with a vertical clerical-script inscription flanked by dragon motifs within a circle, is placed at the center-right edge outside the main frame. |
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| Reverse description | Orange intaglio print with a red seal. A central cartouche contains a penalty text in vertical clerical-script regular style, surrounded by fine guilloche lacework. The numeral 1 and the denomination YEN in Roman lettering appear on either side of the cartouche on guilloche panels, while the denomination in Chinese seal script is arranged vertically above and below the central panel. A red Director of Treasury seal, with a vertical inscription in Chinese clerical script within a rectangle flanked by dragon motifs inside double circles, is placed at the lower left. |
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| Comments |
Japan's first domestically engraved banknote series, the 1885 convertible notes marked the point at which the Bank of Japan stopped relying on foreign printers entirely. Chiossone, a Genoese engraver hired by the Meiji government in 1875, had spent a decade training Japanese craftsmen at the Imperial Printing Bureau — this note is partly the product of that transfer of knowledge, with Chiossone himself cutting the plates.
The paper formula is unusual: mitsumata bast fiber combined with konjac powder, a composition developed specifically to resist counterfeiting by making the paper nearly impossible to replicate with materials available outside Japan at the time.