TOKYO: Given the current value of the yen, tourists to Japan are presumably spending their money so fast that they’re not pausing to look it over too closely.
However, the country’s banknotes reveal a surprising amount about it. And for the first time in forty years, Japan will receive a brand-new set of banknotes on Wednesday, July 3, highlighting three of the greatest thinkers and artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The most traded currencies in the world don’t have much new to share. The well-known faces on US bills have remained the same for a century. The euro, which features fictitious bridges and buildings instead of actual people and places, reflects the compromise inherent in its origin.
China’s yuan still features former chairman Mao Zedong, while the United Kingdom’s new notes feature 75-year-old King Charles III. The Swiss franc now features more generic hands, globes, and Alpine landscapes instead of the local figures it once featured, like the architect Le Corbusier.
Still, the yen tells a tale about the contemporary nation it supports. The notes of today are redesigned for the first time in twenty years, featuring three new portraits: the “father of Japanese capitalism,” Eiichi Shibusawa; pioneering educator and women’s rights activist Umeko Tsuda; and the groundbreaking microbiologist Shibasaburo Kitasato.
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