20 Yen

Among the earliest issues of the Meiji government's centralized paper currency program, this note was produced by Continental Bank Note Company of New York — one of several American security printers contracted during the early 1870s as Japan had no domestic facility capable of producing notes of this quality. Continental was a serious competitor to the American Bank Note Company at the time, though it would eventually be absorbed by it in 1877, just four years after this note was printed.

The 20 Yen denomination placed this firmly in high-value territory for daily Japanese commerce. Relatively few would have circulated in any conventional sense.