1000 Yen 2004, Japan
in Krause book | Number: 104b |
Years of issue: | 01.11.2004 |
Edition: | |
Signatures: | no signature |
Serie: | Serie E (2004) |
Specimen of: | 2004 |
Material: | Cotton fiber |
Size (mm): | 150 x 76 |
Printer: | National Printing Bureau, Tokyo |
* All pictures marked are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.

Description
Watermark:
Hideyo Noguchi (野口 英世 Noguchi Hideyo) and two vertical symbols on right side.
Avers:
Regarding the red seals: the obverse shows a facsimile of the official seal of the bank director, and the reverse shows a facsimile of the official seal of the chief cashier of the Bank of Japan.
Hideyo Noguchi (野口 英世 Noguchi Hideyo, November 9, 1876 – May 21, 1928), also known as Seisaku Noguchi (野口 清作 Noguchi Seisaku), was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist, who in 1911 discovered the agent of syphilis as the cause of progressive paralytic disease.
Noguchi Hideyo was born in Inawashiro, Fukushima prefecture in 1876. When he was one and a half years old, he fell into a fireplace and suffered a burn injury on his left hand. There was no doctor in the small village, but one of the men examined the boy. "The fingers of the left hand are mostly gone," he said, "and the left arm, the left foot, and the right hand are burned; I don't know how badly."
In 1883, Noguchi entered Mitsuwa elementary school. Thanks to generous contributions from his teacher Kobayashi and his friends, he was able to receive surgery on his badly burned hand. He recovered about 70% mobility and functionality in his left hand through the operation.
Noguchi decided to become a doctor to help those in need. He apprenticed himself to Dr. Kanae Watanabe (渡部 鼎 Watanabe Kanae), the same doctor who had performed the surgery. He entered Saisei Gakusha, which later became Nippon Medical School. He passed the examinations to practice medicine when he was twenty years old in 1897. He showed signs of great talent and was supported in his studies by Dr. Morinosuke Chiwaki. In 1898, he changed his first name to Hideyo after reading a novel about a doctor who had the same name - Seisaku - as him. The doctor in the story was intelligent like Noguchi but became lazy and ruined his life.
In 1900 Noguchi moved to the United States, where he obtained a job as a research assistant with Dr. Simon Flexner at the University of Pennsylvania and later at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. He thrived in this environment.[2] At this time his work concerned venomous snakes. In part, his move was motivated by difficulties in obtaining a medical position in Japan, as prospective employers were concerned that his hand deformity would discourage potential patients. In a research setting, he did not have a handicap. He and his peers learned from their work and from each other. In this period, a fellow research assistant in Flexner's lab was Frenchman Alexis Carrel, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in 1912.
Noguchi's work later attracted the Prize committee's scrutiny. In the 21st century, the Nobel Foundation archives were opened for public inspection and research. Historians found that Noguchi was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: in 1913-1915, 1920, 1921 and 1924-1927. During the 1920s, his work was being increasingly criticized for inaccuracies.
While working at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in 1911, he was accused of inoculating orphan children with syphilis in the course of a clinical study. He was acquitted of any wrongdoing at the time but, since the late 20th century, his conduct of the study has come to be considered an early instance of unethical human experimentation. At the time, society had not developed a consensus about how to conduct human experimentation and feelings varied about the medical research community. Antivivisectionists linked their concerns for animals with concerns about humans. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in the late XIX century after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
In 1913, Noguchi demonstrated the presence of Treponema pallidum (syphilitic spirochete) in the brain of a progressive paralysis patient, proving that the spirochete was the cause of the disease. Dr. Noguchi's name is remembered in the binomial attached to another spirochete, Leptospira noguchii.
In 1918, Noguchi traveled extensively in Central America and South America working with the International Health Board to conduct research to develop a vaccine for yellow fever, and to research Oroya fever, poliomyelitis and trachoma. He believed that yellow fever was caused by spirochaete bacteria instead of a virus. He worked for much of the next ten years trying to prove this theory. His work on yellow fever was widely criticized as taking an inaccurate approach that was contradictory to contemporary research, and confusing yellow fever with other pathogens. In 1927-1928 three different papers appeared in medical journals that discredited his theories. It turned out he had confused yellow fever with leptospirosis. The vaccine he developed against "yellow fever" was successfully used to treat the latter disease.
Following the death of Adrian Stokes of yellow fever in September 1927, it became increasingly evident that yellow fever was caused by a virus, not by the bacillus Leptospira icteroides, as Noguchi believed. Feeling his reputation was at stake, Noguchi hastened to Lagos to carry out additional research. However, he found the working conditions in Lagos did not suit him. At the invitation of Dr. William Alexander Young, the brilliant young director of the British Medical Research Institute, Accra, Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), he moved to Accra and made this his base from late in 1927. However, Noguchi proved a very difficult guest and by May 1928 Young regretted his invitation. Noguchi was secretive and volatile, working almost entirely at night to avoid contact with fellow researchers. The diaries of Oskar Klotz, another researcher with the Rockefeller Foundation, describe Noguchi’s temper and behavior as erratic and bordering on the paranoid. His methods were haphazard. According to Klotz, he inoculated huge numbers of monkeys with yellow fever, but failed to keep proper records. He may have believed himself immune to yellow fever, having been inoculated with a vaccine of his own development. Possibly his erratic and irresponsible behavior was caused by the untreated syphilis with which he was diagnosed in 1913, and which may have progressed to neurosyphilis. In any case, he was careless not only of his own safety, but also of the safety of those around him. Despite repeated promises to Young, Noguchi failed to keep infected mosquitoes in their specially designed secure housing. In May 1928, having failed to find evidence for his theories, Noguchi was set to return to New York, but was taken ill in Lagos. He boarded his ship to sail home, but on 12 May was put ashore at Accra and taken to a hospital with yellow fever. After lingering for some days, he died on 21 May. In a letter home, Young states, "He died suddenly noon Monday. I saw him Sunday afternoon – he smiled – and amongst other things, said, “Are you sure you are quite well?" "Quite." I said, and then he said "I don’t understand." Seven days later, despite exhaustive sterilisation of the site and most particularly of Noguchi's laboratory, Young himself died of yellow fever, almost certainly as a result of Noguchi’s reckless disregard for the safety of his fellow workers. He is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
On left side (background) are cherry blossoms (please, read reverse description).
Denominations in numerals are in top corners. In words on left side.
Revers:
In lower left corner are the flowers of Sakura (also they are in lower and top right corners, stylized).
In Japan, cherry blossoms also symbolize clouds due to their nature of blooming en masse, besides being an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, an aspect of Japanese cultural tradition that is often associated with Buddhistic influence, and which is embodied in the concept of mono no aware. The association of the cherry blossom with mono no aware dates back to 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga. The transience of the blossoms, the extreme beauty and quick death, has often been associated with mortality; for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic, and have been utilized often in Japanese art, manga, anime, and film, as well as at musical performances for ambient effect. There is at least one popular folk song, originally meant for the shakuhachi (bamboo flute), titled "Sakura", and several pop songs. The flower is also represented on all manner of consumer goods in Japan, including kimono, stationery, and dishware.
The Sakurakai or Cherry Blossom Society was the name chosen by young officers within the Imperial Japanese Army in September 1930 for their secret society established with the goal of reorganizing the state along totalitarian militaristic lines, via a military coup d'état if necessary.
During World War II, the cherry blossom was used to motivate the Japanese people, to stoke nationalism and militarism among the populace. Even prior to the war, they were used in propaganda to inspire "Japanese spirit," as in the "Song of Young Japan," exulting in "warriors" who were "ready like the myriad cherry blossoms to scatter". In 1932, Akiko Yosano's poetry urged Japanese soldiers to endure sufferings in China and compared the dead soldiers to cherry blossoms. Arguments that the plans for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, involving all Japanese ships, would expose Japan to serious danger if they failed, were countered with the plea that the Navy be permitted to "bloom as flowers of death". The last message of the forces on Peleliu was "Sakura, Sakura" - cherry blossoms. Japanese pilots would paint them on the sides of their planes before embarking on a suicide mission, or even take branches of the trees with them on their missions. A cherry blossom painted on the side of the bomber symbolized the intensity and ephemerality of life; in this way, the aesthetic association was altered such that falling cherry petals came to represent the sacrifice of youth in suicide missions to honor the emperor. The first kamikaze unit had a subunit called Yamazakura or wild cherry blossom. The government even encouraged the people to believe that the souls of downed warriors were reincarnated in the blossoms.
In its colonial enterprises, imperial Japan often planted cherry trees as a means of "claiming occupied territory as Japanese space".
On left side is the view at Mt. Fuji. In front of it - lake Motosu in Fuji Five Lakes region..
Fuji Five Lakes (富士五湖 Fuji-goko) is the name of the area located at the base of Mount Fuji in the Yamanashi Prefecture of Japan. It has a population of about 100,000. and sits approximately 1,000 meters above sea level. The name Fuji Five Lakes comes from the fact that there are five lakes formed by previous eruptions of Mount Fuji. The principal city in the region, Fujiyoshida, has a population of roughly 54,000 and is particularly famous for its udon noodles. Another point of interest is Aokigahara Jukai Forest. The Fuji Five Lakes was selected by the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun and Osaka Mainichi Shimbun as one of the Twenty-Five Winning Sites of Japan in 1927.
The five lakes are located in an arc around the northern half of Mount Fuji. In ancient times, lava flow from a volcanic eruption of Mount Fuji spread across the area, damming up rivers and resulting in the formation of these lakes. They are all considered excellent tourist attractions and fishing spots.
Lake Kawaguchi (河口湖 Kawaguchi-ko) is the most famous of the five lakes, and images of this lake are usually used in posters and commercials for the Fuji Five Lakes area. A large number of hotels line its banks, as do locals providing boat rides to the tourists. It is the only lake in the Fuji Five Lakes area that has an island. Many local cultural events are run near this lake throughout the year.
Lake Motosu (本栖湖 Motosu-ko) is the ninth deepest lake of Japan, and the westernmost of the Fuji Five Lakes, at 140 meters. This lake, along with Lake Sai and Lake Shōji, was formed by lava flowing across what is now Aokigahara Jukai Forest and into the enormous lake that once dominated the area, and these three lakes remain still connected by underground waterways.
The temperature of the water never drops below 4 °C (39 °F), making it the only one of the Fuji Five Lakes that does not freeze in winter.
The western side of Sai (西湖 Sai-ko) shares its banks with the infamous Aokigahara Jukai Forest.
Lake Shōji (精進湖 Shōji-ko) is the smallest of the five lakes. Remnants of lava flow still jut out of the water. Locals usually fish from these rocks.
Mount Fuji (富士山 Fujisan), located on Honshu Island, is the highest mountain in Japan at 3,776.24 m. (12,389 ft.). An active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1707-1708, Mount Fuji lies about 100 kilometers (60 mi.) south-west of Tokyo, and can be seen from there on a clear day. Mount Fuji's exceptionally symmetrical cone, which is snow-capped several months a year, is a well-known symbol of Japan and it is frequently depicted in art and photographs, as well as visited by sightseers and climbers.
Denominations in numerals are in lower left and top right corners.
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