20 Sen

Japan's Meiji government contracted Dondorf & Naumann in Frankfurt for this early emission precisely because domestic printing infrastructure capable of producing secure intaglio currency simply did not exist in 1872. Chiossone — then still working in Europe before his eventual move to Tokyo, where he would spend the rest of his life and is buried — handled both design and engraving, an unusual concentration of responsibility in one hand.

The arrangement was short-lived. Japan moved quickly to build the Printing Bureau, and by the mid-1870s foreign contract printing for government notes was being phased out.