Tokyo
CNN
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Banks throughout Japan started stocking their ATMs on Wednesday with shiny new yen notes sourced from an unlikely location – vibrant yellow flowering paperbush shrubs that develop on craggy Himalayan mountains in Nepal.
Earlier than getting into the wallets of Japanese shoppers, the yen notes had an extended, advanced journey involving months of labor and transport by land and air throughout 1000’s of kilometers.
And this course of has offered a possible new supply of earnings to communities in one of many world’s poorest international locations, by offering money for one among its richest.
Although Japan has pushed for extra digital funds in recent times, money nonetheless reigns king, and it trails behind different Asian international locations like China which have gone virtually utterly cashless.
“I actually assume that Nepal contributed to Japan’s financial system, as money is prime to the Japanese financial system,” stated Tadashi Matsubara, president of Kanpou, the corporate that produces paper for the Japanese authorities.
“With out Nepal, Japan wouldn’t perform.”
The trail from shrub to invoice begins on the foot of the Himalayas in Nepal, close to cities which have lengthy been well-known not for his or her agriculture however as gateways to Mount Everest.
Right here, each spring, the hillsides erupt in yellow – the flowers of the mitsumata plant, often known as argeli or paperbush, native to the Himalayan vary. Its bark has lengthy, sturdy fibers which might be excellent for making skinny but sturdy paper, based on the Kantou web site.
It was once grown domestically in Japan, however manufacturing has been slowly dwindling for years, stated Matsubara. It is laborious work tied to the countryside, and individuals are more and more shifting from rural areas to massive cities like Tokyo in quest of jobs – leaving shrinking villages and dying industries.
“The present actuality is that the variety of farmers who produce paperbush is changing into smaller and smaller,” Matsubara stated.
The diminishing rural inhabitants, worsened by Japan’s demographic disaster as start charges plummet, additionally imply “there are not any heirs, there are not any inheritors” to paperbush farms, he added.
That is the place the Nepali provide chain got here in.
Kanpou first went to Nepal by means of a charity program within the Nineteen Nineties to assist farmers dig wells – and as soon as there, found paperbush rising on mountains so far as the attention might see. They started educating farmers to domesticate the crop, initially solely produced and exported in small portions.
However because the scarcity of Japanese paperbush turned evident within the following years, Kanpou and the Nepali farmers ramped up manufacturing till they turned the principle supply of the yen invoice.
It is a protracted course of, stated Matsubara: farmers plant seedlings in early summer season, harvest their branches within the fall, then spend a number of months processing the bark by means of steaming, peeling, washing and drying.
As soon as the uncooked paper is prepared within the winter, it is despatched to the Nepali capital Kathmandu and pushed to the western Indian metropolis Kolkata, the place it is introduced by ship to Yokohama, Japan.
After inspection, the paper is additional processed, printed, and minimize into money by the Nationwide Printing Bureau in close by Odawara metropolis.
And the brand new payments being distributed this week boast various new options, based on the Financial institution of Japan – together with hologram portraits depicting various outstanding historic figures to stop counterfeiting, with the portrait heads showing to show back and forth as you progress the invoice.
Whereas different international locations have beforehand used holograms on foreign money, that is the primary such use of hologram portraits, based on the central financial institution. Different options embody components of the invoice printed in pearl and luminescent ink, and tactile marks for the visually impaired.
As the brand new payments start circulating, demand for paperbush is rising, with Matsubara saying the brand new notes seem to make use of extra uncooked materials than the outdated ones.
In 2022, paper articles and paper scraps – together with different merchandise in addition to the paperbush used for foreign money – made up greater than 9% of Nepal’s exports to Japan, price $1.2 million, based on the Observatory of Financial Complexity (OEC), which visualizes and distributes worldwide commerce information.
As of final yr, greater than 60% of transactions in Japan have been carried out with money, with the rest by digital funds and different strategies, based on the nationwide Ministry of Economic system, Commerce and Trade.
The earnings from the paperbush gross sales have offered a brand new income stream to Nepali communities, stated Matsubara. He claimed the rising business has helped construct new services and infrastructure in Kanpou’s accomplice villages, and offered newfound monetary stability to susceptible households.
Since 2016, Kanpou has additionally acquired support funding from the federal government’s Japan Worldwide Cooperation Company, permitting them to develop operations, Matsubara stated.
Kanpou doesn’t have information on the typical incomes for his or her accomplice villages, Matsubara stated – however he estimated that every family earns lower than 10,000 yen (about $62), given the dearth of different dominant agricultural merchandise at that altitude.
In 2015, rural Nepali households had a median month-to-month earnings of 27,511 Nepalese rupees (about $205), based on world financial database CEIC.
In the meantime, the most recent crop of paperbush from Nepal’s Ilam district was bought to Japan for greater than 180,000 yen (about $1,114) – that means a income of about 30,000 yen ($185) for every of the six farmer teams that participated inside the district, Matsubara stated.
CNN was unable to independently confirm Matsubara’s claims.
“Initially, this exercise was about Japanese support to Nepal. Now, I believe it’s completely different … the Nepalese individuals are working laborious (to assist) Japan,” he stated
“With out mitsumata, Nepal’s (paperbush), we’d not have been in a position to produce the brand new invoice.”
