100 Yen

The Bank of Chosun — Japan's colonial central bank for Korea, established in 1909 — issued this note during a period of accelerating wartime economic pressure. By 1938, Japan was three years into its war with China, and colonial Korea was being systematically converted into a logistics and manufacturing base. Currency supply in Chosun expanded rapidly to finance that transformation.

Pick 32 is scarcer than its later wartime successors. The 100 Yen denomination circulated alongside Japanese metropolitan notes but was legally distinct — Chosun Bank notes were not legal tender in Japan proper, a jurisdictional boundary the colonial administration maintained even as the two economies became increasingly entangled.