100 Yen

Japan's Meiji government had no domestic capacity for intaglio banknote printing in 1872, so the Dajokan contracted Dondorf & Naumann in Frankfurt — a firm better known at the time for playing cards and securities. Chiossone, an Italian engraver then working in Genoa, was commissioned for the design work before he later relocated to Japan and took a permanent post at the Finance Ministry's printing bureau, where he would spend the rest of his life.

The entire series had to be shipped from Germany, creating obvious logistical vulnerability for a nation trying to assert monetary independence. Frankfurt-printed Japanese government notes of this issue are among the earliest examples of Meiji paper currency and predate the establishment of the Bank of Japan by a decade.