The Engraver Who Crossed the Sea

When Edoardo Chiossone arrived at the Imperial Printing Bureau in 1875, he brought European intaglio technique — and forever altered the face of Japanese currency.

In the winter of 1875, a Genovese engraver named Edoardo Chiossone stepped off a steamer at Yokohama carrying seventeen crates of copper plates, a set of antique Roman cameos, and a letter of introduction from the Italian Finance Ministry. Recruited by the Meiji government to modernize Japan's currency, he came to replace the crude woodblock notes of the Tokugawa era with intaglio printing that could stand beside the banknotes of London and Paris.

The Marriage of Burin and Brush

What Chiossone discovered at the Imperial Printing Bureau in Asakusa was a workshop poised between worlds. Japanese artisans practiced woodblock printing with centuries of accumulated mastery, yet copperplate intaglio — engraving fine lines into polished metal, filling them with viscous ink, and pressing dampened paper against the surface — remained entirely foreign to them.