1 Yen 'Daikoku'

Japan's first domestically engraved banknote series, the 1885 convertible notes marked the point at which the Bank of Japan stopped relying on foreign printers entirely. Chiossone, a Genoese engraver hired by the Meiji government in 1875, had spent a decade training Japanese craftsmen at the Imperial Printing Bureau — this note is partly the product of that transfer of knowledge, with Chiossone himself cutting the plates.

The paper formula is unusual: mitsumata bast fiber combined with konjac powder, a composition developed specifically to resist counterfeiting by making the paper nearly impossible to replicate with materials available outside Japan at the time.