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From: cunningh@noscvax.UUCP (Robert P. Cunningham)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: new Japanese bank notes
Message-ID: <666@noscvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 00:45:38 EST
Article-I.D.: noscvax.666
Posted: Tue Nov  6 00:45:38 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Nov-84 05:04:24 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center
Lines: 25

The Bank of Japan and Japan's finance ministry is now issuing new
banknotes in the 10,000 yen, 5,000 yen, and 1,000 yen denominations.

The new bank notes are smaller (roughly the size of U.S. currency),
and more resistant to counterfeiting than their predecessors.

The new notes use special inks that will not copy correctly, even if
run through the most sophisticated of today's color copying machines.
They feature uneven watermarks so that the blind can tell one note
from another.

Some 300,000 machines that handle bank notes in Japan -- vending
equipment and so on -- have been converted to recognize the new notes
within the last six months.  As old bills come back to banks, they
will be withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new ones.  After
the annual payment of cash bonuses to workers at the end of the year,
most of the old notes will be gone and replaced by the new ones.

If you have old Japanese paper money, don't worry; they will still be
legal tender indefinitely...although they probably won't work in
vending machines after next year or so.

The new notes feature persons "of cultural merit" rther than political
figures: Yukichi Fukuzawa on the 10,000 yen note, Inazo Nitobe on the
5,000 yen note, and Soseki Natsume on the 1,000 note.