1 Yen without serial number

P#54 belongs to the wartime austerity series rushed into production as Japan's resource constraints became acute. The note was printed without serial numbers — a deliberate simplification to accelerate output as the Government Printing Bureau struggled to meet demand while raw materials and skilled labor were increasingly diverted to the war effort.

The omission of serial numbers is the defining characteristic of this issue and complicates any attempt to estimate surviving quantities. Unissued remainders and circulated examples are visually indistinguishable without accompanying documentation.