Money Talks

Dean POLAND (England)

It doesn't grow on trees. It's the root of all evil. It burns a hole in your pocket. What is it?

Yes, money! Indeed, money may be responsible for the ills of our society and the diminishment of our culture, but after traveling to many countries, I've come to realize that money is also an important source of cultural information.

When visiting another country it's possible to gain an insight into the nations culture, simply by putting your hand in your pocket and pulling out a few banknotes (bills). The banknotes of a country are usually adorned with faces of people which that particular country feels are important enough to be immortalized: cultural icons who have influenced their society in a significant way. For example, in England people such as SHAKESPEARE, DICKENS, NEWTON and DARWIN have appeared on its banknotes, perhaps reflecting that literature and science are the most important areas of culture for that particular nation.

And so when I came to Japan, I immediately took a look at the faces on its banknotes. Japan has three notes: 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 yen. (There is a 2,000 yen note, but it has limited circulation.) I studied them carefully. Not surprisingly, I couldn't recognize any of the strange austere faces staring back at me, so I asked my Japanese friends to identify them. I was surprised to find, that without looking at the notes, some of my friends knew one or two faces, but no one knew all three, and a few couldn't even identify one face. Isn't it strange that we look at these faces every day, and yet never really see them: our senses dulled by the grayness of routine. However, after completing my research, I discovered the following:

1,000 yen: NATSUME Soseki (1867~1916)
He was a novelist and a scholar of English literature. In his writing he tried to analyze Japan's civilization and the psychology of intellectuals who were forced to live in a country, thought at the time to be backward compared to the modern civilization of the West.

5,000 yen: NITOBE Inazo (1862~1933)
Educator, cultural interpreter and civil servant. He wanted to create a bridge between the East and the West. He even married an American woman. He is most famous for writing "Bushido-the Soul of Japan," a book recently celebrated by Tom CRUISE on his LAST SAMURAI publicity tour.

10,000 yen: FUKUZAWA Yukichi (1835~1901)
Educator, writer and propagator of Western knowledge during the Meiji period. He founded KEIO University. He believed that Japan was weak because it lacked two things the West had: Science and the Spirit of Independence. Fukuzawa's mission was to inculcate these ideas into the Japanese culture.

What does this tell us about Japanese culture? Like England, Japan is proud of its literary tradition. More significantly, however, each person stated above was concerned with the westernization of Japanese culture. Indeed, this has been a vital issue for Japan since the Meiji period. So when I heard that the faces on Japan's banknotes would change next year, I was interested in knowing who would be selected. I was surprised!

1,000 yen: NOGUCHI Hideyo (1876~1928)
and 5,000 yen: HIGUCHI Ichiyo (1872~1896)
On the 1,000 yen note NOGUCHI Hideyo (1876~1928): a bacteriologist who isolated the spirochete that causes syphilis. More importantly, on the new 5,000 yen will be HIGUCHI Ichiyo (1872~1896). She was the most prominent writer of the Meiji period. Yes! A woman! A woman whose work primarily focused on the unhappy and circumscribed lives of the young women of her time. Does this reflect a change in attitude towards women in Japanese society? From next year, the face of a woman will pass through the male dominated financial institutions of Japan. The face of a woman will sit snugly in the wallets of the most chauvinistic man.

It's also worth noting that none of these people were particularly concerned with western culture, perhaps reflecting Japans recent move away from its preoccupation with western 'things.' In sports, movies and other areas of culture, there has been a rise in national pride: a growing belief that perhaps authentic Japanese culture is not inferior to western culture, and perhaps in many cases, superior. It's true that FUKUZAWA will remain on the 10,000 yen note, but his work was multifaceted and he did, in fact, champion the causes of women in Japanese society.

So the next time you want to know something about a country's culture, don't waste your hard earned money on buying an over-priced book; the money itself can tell you everything you need to know.

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