BACK
BACK
BACK
BACK
BACK
BACK
BACK
BACK
Who are the 3 New Faces On Your Japanese Yen?
In 1984, The Bank of Japan decided to introduce a new set of banknotes every twenty years to stay ahead of potential counterfeiting. In July 2024, new banknotes were fitted with updated watermarks and holograms—all of which you can see on the National Printing Bureau (NPB) website.
Besides the technological upgrades, the banknotes are also updated with new faces. These new bills, which have been slowly trickling into consumer wallets for the last seven months, feature a bacteriologist, an educator, and a businessman.
Shibasaburō Kitasato (1853-1931). Banknote portrait image is largely modeled after a photo taken in 1910, when Kitasato was 57, as well as other images from his 50s.
“We are still finding a large number of great problems awaiting solution at our hands. We must call forth what energy and mental resources we have so that we may successfully undertake this high mission of humanity God calls upon us to discharge with credit to human ability.” – Shibasaburō Kitasato, October 11, 1925, from his Presidential Address at the 6th Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine, in Tokyo
We start with the new sen-yen man, bacteriologist Shibasaburō Kitasato, who replaces another bacteriologist, the bold and recklessly adventurous Hideyo Noguchi.
In a 1977 foreword for the Collected Papers of Shibasaburō Kitasato, former Kitasato Institute president Kimifusa Mizunoe reflected on how the founder of the institute was viewed. “Dr. Kitasato has been characterized in various ways; as a man of persistent effort, a man of fidelity, a man of great foresight, a man of boldness who never neglected details and a man of real learning.”
During the Hong Kong Outbreak of 1894, it was Kitasato (and simultaneously French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin of the Pasteur Institute) who discovered the source of the plague.
In his author Edward Marriott’s engrossing 2003 account, Plague, author Edward Marriott humanizes Kitasato while the scientist was in the throes of finding the direct cause of this late 19th century bubonic plague: “To European eyes, accustomed to the slighter build of most Chinese, Kitasato was comically stocky, even freakish…Kitasato’s personality, appearance, and professional approach appealed to the Hong Kong establishment. Not being French, he was thus removed [unlike Yersin] from the region’s intense Anglo-French colonial rivalry. This of course was an advantage, as no doubt was his penchant for the severely formal uniform of starched white collar and morning coat in the laboratory.”
Past Faces: The 1,000-yen banknote history went through a series of incarnations starting in 1946, featuring Asuka-era politician Prince Shotoku, then in 1984, author Natsume Soseki took Shotoku’s place. After Soseki came bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi.
Back side of 2024 note: Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
Umeko Tsuda (1864-1929). Banknote portrait image is from a series of photos taken when she was in her 30s, around the time she founded Tsuda College, then called Joshi Eigaku Juku.
“Japan can never reach the highest stage of her advancement until all her people, women as well as men, have advanced intellectually, as well as morally, and all are given the chance to develop to their utmost capacity.” –Umeko Tsuda, March 31, 1908, from an address to a graduating class at Tsuda College
By the time Tsuda turned 18, she had lived in the United States longer than Japan. At 6 years old, she was volunteered by her father, Sen (co-founder of Aoyama Gakuin University) to live overseas as a part of the famed Iwakura Mission, a 100-member diplomatic expedition to the United States. According to author Janice P. Nimura’s Daughters of the Samurai, the Iwakura Mission paid for the entire trip, and provided Tsuda with a stipend equaling around 800 dollars a month. For the next decade, young Tsuda lived with a white family in Washington D.C., learning English and Christian values.
After returning to Japan in 1882, Tsuda faced reverse culture shock and discrimination. Her knowledge of the Japanese language had faded, and she grew frustrated at the state of women in Japan. As former Tsuda College president Masako Iino put it, Tsuda, upon her return, “had difficulty handling chopsticks, for instance, and could not sit on tatami mat floors. Language was a serious problem…The hardest thing she found was that she was virtually outside the mainstream of Japanese culture.”
After enduring reverse culture shock and discrimination, Tsuda headed back to the United States and earned a degree in Biology and Education from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania (Class of 1890). Bryn Mawr itself had just been founded in 1885; from this fact alone, Tsuda was given yearslong exposure to how a new college was launched and survived those first fledgling years. In 1900, she founded Joshi Eigaku Juku. Nineteen years after her death, the school’s name changed to Tsuda Juku Daigaku, or Tsuda College.
Past Faces: The 5,000-yen banknote started with, again, Prince Shōtoku (1957), then pre-WWII diplomat Nitobe Inazō (1984), and writer/poet Ichiyō Higuchi (2004).
Back side of 2024 note: Wisteria flowers, the note shaded light purple.
Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931). Banknote portrait image is from a series of photos taken in 1910, when Shibusawa was 70, and redone to give him more “vibrancy and youthfulness,” writes the NPB.
“What on earth is the meaning of civilization after all? That is to say, I think that civilization is lacking in the world today…[maybe Japan has] no other option but to enter the fray and follow the law of the jungle.” – Eiichi Shibusawa, March 10, 1915, at an Association Concordia meeting
Shibusawa, deemed the “supreme leader of Japanese capitalism” by expert economist Tsuchiya Takao, can be found memoralized in at least three bronze sculptures in the Tokyo area. Now, he’ll be everywhere. His business acumen has been praised around the world. Best-selling author Peter Drucker was quoted as crediting Shibusawa and Mitsubishi zaibatsu founder Iwasaki Yataro as influential as J.P Morgan or John D. Rockefeller. “…these two men founded something like two-thirds of Japan’s enterprises in manufacturing and transportation. No other two men in any economy have had a similar impact.”
As Shibusawa biographer Masakazu Shimada puts it, young Eiichi endured a turbulent childhood, moving from the oldest son of a peasant family that produced silk and indigo to becoming a swordsman at 21, eventually plotting an attempt to “expel the [Western] barbarians” by taking command of Takasaki Castle with 70 other men and devising a way “to burn down Yokohama City.” Shibusawa came to his senses; it was, in his defense, the 1860’s, a time of great upheaval in Japanese society, and many Japanese were still carrying the rebellious sonno-joi spirit.
By 1867, Shibusawa had worked his way through the ranks under shogun Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu. A perspective-changing trip to Paris that same year led Shibusawa, already adept at how Japan’s economy worked between shogunate, to understand where his country’s future was headed. Reflecting on the Paris International Exposition, which had exhibits from over forty different countries, including Japan, Shibusawa felt a profound sense of global togetherness. “If nations pool their strengths,” he wrote in 1871, the same year his father died, “explain the reasons for their actions, engage in free trade, point the way forward economically for their people, and adopt consistent weights, measurements, and currencies, we can understand one another’s position, erase thoughts of hatred and evil between nations, and foster a spirit of mutual love.”
Past Faces: The first 10,000-yen bank note was released with, again, Prince Shōtoku (1958), followed by Keio founder Yukichi Fukuzawa (1984 and 2004), who remained on the note for 40 years.
Back side of 2024 note: The red brick building at Tokyo’s Marunouchi Station.
Follow LUJ on Instagram
