10 Kyats

This note was issued under Japanese occupation, when the State Bank of Burma functioned as a puppet institution following the Imperial Japanese Army's seizure of Rangoon in March 1942. The occupying administration needed local-currency infrastructure quickly, and the State Bank was reconstituted to provide it — issuing notes that were legal tender by military decree rather than any organic monetary authority.

Japan's Southern Development Bank had already been flooding occupied territories with its own "banana money," but Burma received a parallel domestic series. Postwar, Allied authorities declared all occupation-era Burmese notes invalid, and large quantities were simply abandoned or burned.