200 Yen

The 200 Yen denomination is unusual in modern Japanese paper money history — high-value notes at this level were tools of large commercial settlement, not everyday retail currency, and this series was issued during a period of acute financial instability. The Shōwa Financial Crisis of 1927 triggered a wave of bank runs across Japan, forcing the government to declare a three-week bank holiday in April of that year and to issue emergency notes at speed to stabilize reserves. Whether this specific 200 Yen note entered circulation before or during that crisis window is a question the issue dates don't cleanly resolve.

The Cabinet Printing Bureau had produced Bank of Japan notes domestically since the Meiji period, a deliberate policy of keeping currency production under state rather than private control — contrasting sharply with contemporaries who still relied on European security printers well into the 1930s.