5 Yen

The Cabinet Printing Bureau — Naikaku Insatsukyoku — had been producing Bank of Japan notes since the Meiji period, and by 1930 its intaglio work was technically accomplished enough that Japan had little need for the foreign contractors, particularly De La Rue, that earlier series had depended upon. This note belongs to a period of acute deflationary pressure: Finance Minister Inoue Junnosuke restored the gold standard in January 1930 at the pre-war parity, a decision that proved disastrous and was reversed within two years.

Inoue was assassinated in February 1932 by an ultranationalist, one of several political killings that bracketed the short, brutal life of Japan's gold standard experiment.