Yen sign ¥

Japan and China both use ¥, so “¥500” alone doesn’t say which currency you mean. When it matters, be explicit:

• Japanese yen: JPY, or JP¥1,000
• Chinese yuan (renminbi): CNY, or CN¥100

In local writing, Japanese text often uses the kanji 円 after the number (1,000円), and Chinese text often uses 元 (100元) in everyday contexts.

Some fonts draw ¥ with one horizontal bar, others with two. It is the same character either way.

Yen prices are whole numbers in practice: ¥1,500, not ¥1,500.00. The yuan divides into 100 fen, so you will see decimals such as CN¥12.50.

On older Japanese systems that use the Shift_JIS encoding, the byte that means backslash in ASCII is shown as ¥. That is why Japanese Windows users often see file paths like C:¥Windows. Copy such text and you may get a backslash that looks like a yen sign, or a real yen sign where code expects a backslash.

The fix is simple: when you need the currency symbol, copy the real ¥ from this page; when you need a path separator, use the backslash key.

￥ (fullwidth yen sign) is a separate character used in fullwidth Japanese and Chinese text. It is wider and sits comfortably next to kanji, but it doesn’t match the regular ¥ in a search.

The Mac and Windows shortcuts are in the table above. Beyond those:

• iPhone: long-press the $ key on the numbers keyboard and slide to ¥.
• Android (Gboard): long-press $ on the symbols page.
• LaTeX: \textyen.
• Excel: pick the Japanese or Chinese currency format, so the sign and the number of decimal places match the currency.
• Data and payments: store the ISO code (JPY or CNY) next to every amount. The symbol alone can’t tell your software which currency it is.