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This article aims to demonstrate the evolution of the Bank of Tokyo, a Japanese bank specialized in foreign exchanges. Founded after the liquidation of the Yokohama Specie Bank (1880-1947), a large international bank inside the Japanese Empire, the Bank of Tokyo merged with the Mitsubishi Bank in 1996. The Bank later became the Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank, and is today the Mitsubishi Tokyo UFJ Bank, one of the biggest commercial banks in the world. The Bank of Tokyo was established after the collapse of the empire. It was active under the Bretton Woods regime and was finally reorganized during the global financial crisis. The history of the Bank thus embodies the transformation of contemporary Japanese banking. This article stresses the continuity between the “imperial dynamic” and the “global strategy” by focusing on the organizational and micro-strategic dimensions rather than on the political and macro-economic dimensions.