The world’s most traded currencies have nothing fresh to say about their nation. New Japanese yen banknotes are bucking that trend, says Gearoid Reidy for Bloomberg Opinion.
Japan 's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shows new banknotes with Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda, on the day of the new notes of 10,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 1,000 yen went into circulation, at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan July 3, 2024. REUTERS/Issei Kato/Pool, visitors to Japan are probably spending their cash so quickly that they’re not stopping to examine it too carefully.
But the yen still tells a story about the modern country it serves. Today’s notes are the first redesign in 20 years, introducing three new portraits: Eiichi Shibusawa, the “father of Japanese capitalism”; Umeko Tsuda, a pioneering educator and women’s rights activist; and Shibasaburo Kitasato, a groundbreaking microbiologist.
His philosophy is a forerunner of today’s ethical investing, and still informs the ideal of the country’s capitalism today. In a curious quirk of timing, the current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is believed to be a fan. Kishida incorporated much of this thinking in his “New Capitalism” framework announced at the beginning of his term, and one of his early allies was Shibusawa’s descendant, Ken Shibusawa.
She left the country at the age of just six as one of five young girls accompanying the Iwakura Mission, a fact-finding journey of over 100 scholars aimed at modernising the nation with Western advances . She stayed in the US for a decade. Then, unhappy with her prospects in Japan, she returned to attend Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia.
He was cruelly denied for reasons that remain unclear; some charitably assume it to be because the committee had not yet begun the practice of sharing prizes among more than one person; others suspect turn-of-the-century racism against Asians.The first takeaway is the value of exposure to new ideas. The trio had formative international education, assimilating what was then cutting-edge knowledge before bringing it back home.
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