5 Yen

Japan's 1871 New Currency Regulations had just decimalized the monetary system when the government turned to American bank note firms for its early paper issues. The Continental Bank Note Company, then a serious competitor to American Bank Note before the 1879 merger that absorbed it, produced this note in New York — a foreign-printed government obligation at a moment when Japan had no domestic facility capable of matching the intaglio security standards required.

The reliance on American printers for sovereign currency was a calculated short-term measure. The government's own printing bureau, the Shishū-sha, would not reach sufficient technical capacity until later in the decade.