50 Yen

Japan's postwar currency reconstruction moved in stages, and this 50 Yen note belongs to the period when the Bank of Japan was still working within severe paper and ink constraints imposed by occupation-era resource shortages. The Printing Bureau had resumed domestic production after American GHQ oversight began to ease, but full technical recovery took years.

The watermark — a simple pattern by international standards — reflects what the Bureau could consistently reproduce at volume during this transitional window. By 1958, rising coin production made low-denomination paper notes increasingly uneconomical, and the 50 Yen note was phased out in favor of the nickel 50 Yen coin introduced that same year.