In 1984 the Bank of Japan changed the image on its ¥10,000 banknote to Fukuzawa Yukichi, the writer and thinker who might have had the most far-reaching impact and influence in recent Japanese history. In 1854, US Navy Commodore Matthew Perry lead a fleet of ships into Tokyo Bay to demand an end to the 200-year-old isolationist policy of the shogunate feudal government and force Japan to open its doors to the outside world. When Fukuzawa saw what had happened, he realized that for Japan to survive, it must stop learning from the Netherlands and instead shift its focus to the US.
Fukuzawa began studying English. In 1859 he was presented with an opportunity to travel to the US with a Japanese government delegation and in 1868 he traveled to Europe with another group.
Upon returning home, Fukuzawa wrote a book that introduced US, British and other advanced European countries to the Japanese public. Entitled Things Western, the book could be found in almost every Japanese household in the 19th century.
Fukuzawa used this method to enlighten the Japanese public and to inform them of the importance of studying Western and US modernization.
The most impressive aspect of Fukuzawa’s life was that he had absolutely no interest in official positions or titles. In the dying years of the Tokugawa shogunate, Fukuzawa was invited by the shogun to take on the role of minster of foreign affairs: Fukuzawa gracefully declined. When the Meiji emperor took onboard Fukuzawa’s recommendations and set into action a comprehensive Westernization of the nation, Fukuzawa was asked to fulfill the role of prime minister, but once again declined.
In Fukuzawa’s view, becoming an official simply causes an individual to become misguided by his position of authority and to become detached from reality. On the other hand, teaching allows a person to open the minds of their students to the truth, understand the value of learning and find the correct path to take in life.
In 1984, the image for the updated ¥1,000 banknote was Japanese author Natsume Soseki. The Japanese authorities have to this day preserved Soseki’s former residence as a commemorative museum. There are visitors to the museum on an almost daily basis and there are specialist tour guides. On weekdays, teachers bring students to the museum to experience the seemingly ordinary, yet extremely rich teaching environment.
Japan has produced a large number of Nobel Prize in Literature winners, which is certainly a result of the importance Japanese society places on writers and literature. Which is why in 2004, the image on the ¥5,000 banknote was changed from Nitobe Inazo — a famous agricultural economist — to 19th-century poet and writer Ichiyo Higuchi, who died in 1896, at the young age of 25, after contracting tuberculosis.
In 2004, the ¥1,000 banknote was updated again and the image was changed to Hideyo Noguchi (1876-1928). A medical scientist by profession, Noguchi is known as the “father of bacteriology” in Japan.
Following medical treatment for a burn that Noguchi suffered to his left hand during childhood, the fingers on his left hand were left crooked and deformed. For this reason, Noguchi later vowed to become a doctor and cure all kinds of illnesses.
He could not have predicted that on entering medical college after having achieved outstanding grades, a professor would advise him that the condition of his hand would make him unsuitable to practice as a clinician, instead encouraging Noguchi to devote his energy toward medical research. Sure enough, Noguchi devoted his entire life to the research of bacteria.
In 1904, while studying in the US, Noguchi made fame following his discovery of the causative agent of syphilis — the bacteria Treponema pallidum. Later, Noguchi went to Ghana to carry out research into yellow fever. When he discovered the pathogenic bacteria that causes yellow fever, Noguchi was unable to correctly identify its shape since the electron microscope had yet to be invented, though he published a research paper on the subject. Regrettably, Noguchi himself contracted yellow fever and died in Ghana on May 21, 1928, at the age of 51. On his gravestone, inscribed in Japanese, are the words: “He devoted all his life to science; he lived for mankind and died for mankind.”
A Hideyo Noguchi museum is being built in Accra, the capital of Ghana, so that Noguchi’s legacy will live on in the memory of Africans. A commemorative bronze statue of Noguchi can be found in Tokyo’s Ueno Park, while his portrait graces the ¥1,000 banknote in honor of the memory of the great “father of bacteriology.”
From the imagery that adorns a nation’s currency, it is possible to ascertain the essence of that country’s culture. If the image of a past ruler still remains on the currency — especially if his methods were cruel — then irrespective of whether the ruler is dead or still alive, it shows that the nation still has some way to go before becoming a truly humane and cultured society.
Lu Chun-yi is a pastor at the Presbyterian church in Taiwan.
Translated by Edward Jones
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