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50 Sen
| Issuer | Bank of Chosen |
|---|---|
| Year | 1937 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 50 Sen (0.50) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Dark olive-green note with an ornate guilloche border framing the entire face. At center, large Chinese characters 伍拾錢 (Fifty Sen) are rendered in bold intaglio, flanked on the left by a circular red seal with Japanese characters and on the right by a numeral 50 within a rosette medallion. The bank title 朝鮮銀行 (Bank of Chosen) appears below center, with the issue date 昭和十二年 (Showa year 12) along the lower margin alongside a printer's imprint. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | THE BANK OF CHOSEN FIFTY SEN 拾伍 |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Chōsen (朝鮮銀行) functioned as the central bank for colonial Korea and also held currency-issuing authority in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and parts of northern China — an unusually wide operational remit for what was nominally a colonial institution. By 1937, the year Japan launched full-scale war in China, the Printing Bureau in Tokyo was managing an expanding currency portfolio across multiple occupied territories, and small-denomination fractional notes like this one absorbed much of the pressure from coin metal shortages that accelerated through the late 1930s.
The sen series generally circulated hard. Low denominations passed through many hands in daily retail transactions and surviving examples with decent paper integrity are proportionally uncommon given the print runs.