Given the current value of the yen, tourists to Japan probably spend their money so quickly that they don’t even look at it.
But the banknotes say a surprising amount about the country. And on Wednesday, Japan got its first in four decades, a brand-new series of banknotes featuring a trio of intellectual and cultural titans from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The world’s most traded currencies have little new to report. The familiar faces on U.S. banknotes haven’t changed in a century. The euro, reflecting the compromise inherent in its origins, eschews not just people but even real places, instead depicting fictional bridges and buildings. The United Kingdom’s new banknotes feature the 75-year-old King Charles III; the Chinese renminbi still depicts Chairman Mao Zedong. The Swiss franc once depicted local personalities such as architect Le Corbusier, but has recently opted for more generic hands, globes and Alpine landscapes.
