Banknote History

History of Japanese Banknotes: Meiji Yen, Foreign Bank Notes, Occupation Issues and the 2024 Series

Japan has used paper money for more than four centuries, from merchant receipts circulating in Ise around the year 1600 to the Series F notes of 3 July 2024. In between sit the Meiji yen printed in Germany, private national banks issuing their own paper, a foreign bank issuing notes at Yokohama, and six lettered postwar series.

Yamada Hagaki, c.1600 First BoJ note 1885 Series A to F Series F, 3 July 2024

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Last updated: September 2026

What was Japan's first paper money?

Japan's first paper money was the Yamada Hagaki, issued around the year 1600 in the Ise region and circulated among merchants. Clan paper money followed: the Echizen Fukui Domain issued the first hansatsu notes in 1661, and by the close of the Edo period nearly 80 percent of clans had issued them.

The Yamada Hagaki began life as a practical fix rather than a monetary experiment. A priest and merchant in the Ise Yamada area, in what is now Mie Prefecture, issued it as a deposit receipt for small change payable against silver traded by weight, and the receipt itself began circulating as money in the local area (Bank of Japan Currency Museum). Merchants in the Kinki region copied the idea with private checks of their own.

Domains then took the format over for public finance. Hansatsu notes let a clan cover a deficit and make up the national shortage of small change at the same time. The Tokugawa Shogunate repeatedly tried to hold them back, banning them, licensing them for fixed terms and at one point allowing only silver-denominated types, and none of it worked. By the end of the Edo period the Currency Museum records that nearly 80 percent of clans were issuing hansatsu, with severe inflation as the result.

How did the Meiji government create the yen banknote?

The Meiji government adopted the yen under the New Currency Act of 1871, then commissioned its first modern notes abroad. A German company was engaged in 1870 to produce the Meiji Tsuho, issued in 1872, and an American company was engaged in 1871 to produce national bank notes, issued in 1873.

The first government note to circulate nationwide was the Dajokan satsu of 1868, named for the Grand Council of State that issued it (National Printing Bureau of Japan). Printing methods of the period were simple and counterfeiting was common, which is exactly why the government looked overseas for its replacement. The German-printed notes of 1872 are still known in Japan as the New Note, or the German Note.

Money also needed issuers. The National Bank Act of 1872 allowed private banks, confusingly called national banks, to issue convertible notes, and the Currency Museum notes that a revision in 1876 made those notes inconvertible. The government then printed more inconvertible paper to pay for the Seinan Civil War of 1877, the value of paper money dropped sharply, and public trust went with it.

The first note printed in Japan, and the first portrait

1877 is the year Japanese banknote production came home. The new-type national bank note issued that year was the first domestically produced Western-style note, and the first that the Italian engraver Edoardo Chiossone cut in Japan. Four years later, in 1881, the Remodeled Note replaced the German Note and carried a portrait of Empress Jingu, the first portrait ever to appear on a Japanese banknote. Chiossone's engraving work set the house style that Japanese notes still follow: dense intaglio line work built around a single face.

Which foreign bank was granted a concession to issue banknotes in Japan?

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is the foreign bank with a documented banknote issue in Japan. HSBC's archives record a Yokohama branch opened in 1866 and an HSBC note issued at Yokohama in 1870. Government and national bank notes were invalidated at the end of 1899, leaving the Bank of Japan as Japan's sole note issuer.

HSBC was founded in Hong Kong in 1865 and expanded along trade routes rather than borders. Its own history team records the Yokohama branch opening in 1866, the same wave that produced Calcutta in 1867, Saigon in 1870 and Manila in 1875, and states plainly that the bank issued banknotes in key markets to stimulate and accelerate trade. The archive holds an early HSBC banknote issued in Yokohama in 1870 (HSBC History, Timeline). Japan's treaty ports were an international settlement economy in those decades, and a foreign bank's paper moved goods through them.

The window closed with the century. The Currency Museum records that Bank of Japan notes circulated smoothly while notes issued by national banks and by the government were invalidated at the end of 1899, and Japan's Ministry of Finance published the law fixing that circulation deadline (National Diet Library Digital Collections). From that point the Bank of Japan's notes were the paper money circulating in Japan.

What was the Bank of Japan's first banknote?

The Bank of Japan's first banknote was the Daikoku note, a silver-convertible 1 yen first issued on 8 September 1885. It takes its nickname from Daikokuten, the Japanese form of the Hindu deity Mahakala, whose image appears on the front. The Bank had opened two and a half years earlier, on 10 October 1882.

The sequence matters. Matsukata Masayoshi became finance minister in 1881, absorbed the excess inconvertible paper through fiscal austerity, and only then set up a central bank to issue convertible notes. The Bank of Japan Act of 1882 was promulgated in June with capital of 10 million yen and a licence to operate for 30 years, and business began on 10 October (Bank of Japan, History). The first note waited until the value of paper money had recovered.

Japan held silver as specie, so the Daikoku note was exchangeable for silver coins rather than gold. That is a detail collectors often miss: Japan ran a silver standard first. Remodeled silver-convertible notes carrying Sugawara no Michizane, Takenouchi no Sukune, Wake no Kiyomaro and Fujiwara no Kamatari followed in sequence from 1888 to 1891, and the Remodeled 100 yen of 1891 is the largest note Japan has ever issued at 130 mm by 210 mm. The Currency Act of 1897 moved Japan onto the gold standard, and gold-convertible Bank of Japan notes followed in 1899.

What are the Japanese banknote series, year by year?

Japanese banknotes fall into two groups: the Meiji and Taisho issues identified by name, and the lettered Bank of Japan series A to F that run from 1946 to the present. The National Printing Bureau publishes first-issue dates, portraits and dimensions for every lettered series.

Series data, first-issue dates and portraits per the National Printing Bureau, Basic information on Banknotes, with the Meiji issues from the Bureau's History of Japanese Paper Currency. The Bureau names the 1870 and 1871 contractors only as a German company and an American company, so no firm names are given here.

What happened to Japanese banknotes during the Second World War?

Wartime Japan deleted the convertibility promise from its own notes and issued the I-series and Ro-series from 1942 to 1945. The Bank of Japan Act of 1942 formally moved the country to a managed currency system, so notes were no longer exchangeable for gold coins and issuance was controlled by the central bank alone.

The change is visible on the paper. Older Bank of Japan notes carried a printed statement that they were convertible; on the wartime series that line simply disappears (National Printing Bureau, Showa era). Japan had stopped exchanging banknotes for gold coins that December, three months after the United Kingdom left the gold standard in September 1931.

Outside the home islands, Japan's occupation administrations issued a separate family of paper for the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, the Netherlands Indies and Oceania, covered in Japanese invasion money and set beside the Allied issues in WWII occupation and military currency.

Occupation-era Series A and the 1946 new yen

Japan re-papered itself in a single stroke during the Allied occupation. Under the Bank of Japan Notes Deposit Ordinance of 1946, notes with certificate paper affixed were used as a substitute while the new money was printed, and the Decree on Emergency Financial Measures led to the issuance of the Series A notes. Six Series A denominations were issued in sequence from 1946 to 1948. One of them holds a record: the Series A 5 sen note of 1948 is the smallest note Japan has ever issued, at 48 mm by 94 mm, against the 130 mm by 210 mm of the Remodeled 100 yen of 1891.

How did the postwar series A to E develop?

Series A appeared from 1946, Series B across 1950 to 1953, Series C from 1957 to 1969, Series D in 1984 with three denominations redesigned at once, and Series E on 1 November 2004. Japan settled into a roughly twenty-year redesign rhythm that Series F continued in 2024.

Series C introduced the denominations that still anchor Japanese wallets: the 5,000 yen on 1 October 1957 and the 10,000 yen on 1 December 1958, both carrying Prince Shotoku, with the 1,000 yen following on 1 November 1963 and the 500 yen on 1 November 1969. Series D in 1984 was the first simultaneous three-denomination change, bringing in Fukuzawa Yukichi, Nitobe Inazo and Natsume Soseki. The 2,000 yen note joined the family on 19 July 2000, the only modern Japanese note without a portrait on the front, using the Shurei Gate of Shuri Castle in Okinawa instead.

Serial-number colours are the quiet tell that dates a note. The Bureau changed the Series C 1,000 yen from black to blue in 1976 because every number had been used, then repeated the exercise on Series D and E notes in 1990, 2000, 2011 and 2019 (National Printing Bureau, Heisei and Reiwa eras). Two Fukuzawa 10,000 yen notes exist: the Series D issue of 1984 has no hologram and two Japanese pheasants on the reverse, the Series E issue of 2004 a hologram and a Chinese phoenix. Both remain acceptable currency.

What is Japan's 2024 banknote series?

Series F entered circulation on 3 July 2024 with three denominations. The 10,000 yen carries Shibusawa Eiichi, the 5,000 yen carries Tsuda Umeko and the 1,000 yen carries Kitasato Shibasaburo. All three use high-definition watermarks and a hologram whose 3-D portraits rotate when tilted, which the Bank of Japan describes as the first time this has been used in banknotes.

The choices tell a story about how Japan sees its own modernisation. Shibusawa Eiichi was involved in founding around 500 businesses and economic organisations; his reverse shows the red-brick Marunouchi building of Tokyo Station, an Important Cultural Property. Tsuda Umeko was among the first female students sent to the United States under the government's overseas study programme and founded the private women's college now called Tsuda University; her reverse carries Japanese wisteria. Kitasato Shibasaburo developed serum therapy for tetanus and discovered the plague bacillus; his reverse reproduces Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (National Printing Bureau, Issuance of a new series).

The universal-design work is less publicised and more interesting. Each denomination carries a tactile mark of eleven diagonal lines, identical in shape and size but placed in a different position, and the face-value numerals were enlarged on both sides (Bank of Japan, special features of the new series). Sizes held the established ladder: 160 mm, 156 mm and 150 mm wide, all 76 mm tall.

How do you collect Japanese banknotes?

Most collectors build Japanese collections one of three ways: by lettered series from A to F, by theme such as Prince Shotoku or the Bank of Japan building, or by era, treating the Meiji convertible notes, the wartime issues and the postwar rebuild as separate chapters. Condition drives price in every one of them.

Two practical points are specific to Japan. Series letters do the work that catalog numbers do elsewhere, so learning the A to F sequence and the first-issue dates above will place almost any modern note within a few years. And be careful with Series A 100 yen notes, where the National Printing Bureau states that examples missing the red mark below the central denomination text on the front, or showing red on the back, are invalid.

Our banknote grading guide explains the ladder from Uncirculated down through AU, XF, VF, F, VG and G, and graded versus raw banknotes covers when certification earns its cost. Japanese notes from the 1946 rebuild turn up more often in circulated grades than modern series, so decide your condition floor before buying. Browse stock through banknotes by country, and read the collecting overview at our Japan banknotes hub.

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