1/2 Yen

Japan's Meiji government contracted Dondorf & Naumann in Frankfurt for its first Western-style banknote series because domestic printing technology in 1872 simply could not produce intaglio currency to the standard required. Chiossone — an Italian engraver who had trained in Genoa and worked for the Italian government before being recruited — designed and engraved the plates himself, an unusual consolidation of both roles in a single hand.

Chiossone would later relocate permanently to Japan and found the official government printing bureau, training a generation of Japanese engravers. This Frankfurt-printed half-yen note predates all of that infrastructure.