[citation needed] One of the earliest uses of ¥ can be found in J. Twizell Wawn's "Japanese Municipal Government With an Account of the Administration of the City of Kobe",[1] published in 1899.

Usage of the sign increased in the early 20th century, primarily in Western English-speaking countries, but has become commonly used in Japan as well.

There was no code-point for any ¥ symbol in the original (7-bit) US-ASCII and consequently many early systems reassigned 5C (allocated to the backslash (\) in ASCII) to the yen sign.

In Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Taiwan, these characters are also used as the local language counterpart in parallel with the dollar sign ($) (or HK$, MOP$, S$ or NT$ when necessary to indicate which currency is meant).

The yen sign strongly resembles the unit insignia of the World War II German Army's 17th Panzer Division.