Japan’s New Yen Notes Make Steady Progress

On 3 July 2024, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) began issuing its new series of banknotes, including the ¥10,000, ¥5,000, and ¥1,000 denominations, marking the first currency redesign in two decades. Almost a year later, as of the end of June 2025, c. 5 billion of the new banknotes had been issued, accounting for about 30% of the total volume of notes in circulation.

Although the penetration rate is still lower than during the previous renewal in 2004, when new notes constituted about 61.1% of the total in the same period, the BoJ states that the rollout is progressing smoothly and as expected.

A slower but steady transition

Three key factors can explain the more gradual shift.

First, the overall volume of cash in circulation has grown significantly.

Around 11 billion banknotes were in use two decades ago, which has risen to 18.7 billion (as of December 2024) now.

When calculating the volume of banknotes in circulation by denomination, a notable increase was observed in 10,000 yen notes. Specifically, the volume of banknotes increased from 7 billion at the end of 2004 to 11.5 billion at the end of 2024. This suggests that the total volume of banknotes in circulation was pushed up by high denomination notes, and not by low denomination notes such as the 1,000 yen.