10 Yen in Gold

The Bank of Taiwan was established in 1899 as a colonial financial institution under Japanese rule, tasked with managing currency across Taiwan and extending banking operations into southern China and Southeast Asia. Its early gold-denominated notes were not ordinary circulating currency — they were instruments designed to facilitate Japanese commercial penetration into regions where confidence in silver or paper yen fluctuated considerably.

The "in Gold" designation was a deliberate promise of specie convertibility, and by 1916 that promise was already under strain. Japan had suspended gold exports at the outbreak of World War I, making gold-clause notes something of a legal fiction in practice.