Japanese Military Yen Notes

Posted by Mike on 1/28/2012 to Miscellaneous

The Invasion of China.
By the end of the 19th. century Japan had become established as a formidable military power in the Far East.
Fast forward to the era of the 1940s:
With no prior warning given Japan's new prime minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye, as representative of The Japanese Imperial Government authorised war.
On 7th. July 1937 the invasion of China commenced with the landing of Japanese troops, the Marco Polo Bridge conflict.
The capital cultural and financial cities of China fell to the invading army. For buying local commodities and paying their soldiers the miliitary paymasters used Bank of Japan yen currency notes, this caused conflict with the established Chinese Yuan currency notes, by 1938 the Japanese issued bank notes which were called military Yen, these notes were 'overstamped' and could not be exchanged for validated Japan's domestic issued notes.
The large scale military operations caused high inflation which could only be alleviated by forcing the Japanese yen to be validated only back in Japan, for homeland domestic use, which intern became devastatingly adverse for Japan. Eventually these were replaced with Central Reserve Bank issued notes, which in turn were devaluated ceasing to be legal tender at the end of World War II.
Shown here are examples of Japanese military 5 Yen and 10 Yen notes of an exceptional type, each having handstamp varieties: The type rare 'Hiragana' and the type scarce 'Hentaigana'. These Canton overprint stamps are the Japanese Hiragana or the Hentaigana characters within a 10 or 11 mm circle. They are seen in either red or green or in black and in purple, they were applied by hand in March 1939.

Potrait is 'Sugawara Michizane'

Potrait is of 'Wakeno Kiyomaro'