High-tech Japan aims to stop counterfeit banknotes

Holograms and kaleidoscopes of shimmering colours will be part of Japan's latest hi-tech response to the growing number of banknote counterfeiting cases troubling authorities.
New bank-notes will go into circulation on Monday with sophisticated security features and new designs as the central bank hopes to reverse a 25-fold rise in the number of forged notes discovered in the country in the past five years.
"We have made these banknotes hoping they will be foolproof," Bank of Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui said in August. Some 30,000 forged banknotes are expected to be found by the end of this year alone, almost double the 16,910 in 2003.
The new notes - the first major overhaul in 20 years - will feature holograms, watermarks and latent images, where the word "Nippon" (Japan) can be seen on the reverse when the notes are slanted at a specific angle.
Iridescent pink ink will be used on the borders of the bills, and the Chinese characters for "1,000 yen" will appear in pink when the bill of that value is tilted a certain way.
Authorities have blamed the rise in counterfeit notes on the proliferation of computers and sophisticated printers. Fake notes are also easy to use in some 1.8 million vending machines dotted around Japan because of their limited scanning abilities.
Some 5 billion of the new bills sit at the offices of BOJ, waiting to be distributed to financial institutions early on Monday morning. They are expected to be circulating among retailers by the day's end.
The 10 billion existing 1,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 10,000 yen bills will remain legal tender. The 2,000 yen bill, introduced four years ago, is not being replaced.
Not content with just high security though, Japan has also sought a change of image, putting a portrait of a woman on a banknote for the first time. The new 5,000 yen notes will feature a portrait of novelist Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896), Japan's first professional woman writer whose works challenged male-dominated society.
"There have been instances of women (on banknotes) in overseas countries but it is a first for Japan. It is very significant," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said after observing test prints of the new banknotes in June. The current 2,000 yen bill has a picture of Murasaki Shikibu, the 10th century female author of the historical epic "The Tale of Genji". But the picture is on the back and is not a portrait.