The Brooklyn Rail

I stare at the rectangular paper in front of me. It is slightly larger than expected, but otherwise closely mimics a traditional banknote in its double-sided form and detailed design. In the background, intricate abstract botanical curls are printed in light yellow-green ink. To the right, a portrait of what appears to be an important male-presenting figure is visible, but—curiously—the portrait’s face is blank. From there, the strangeness proliferates. Layered in dark navy ink at each of the four corners is a set of three imposing zeros separated by a period: “0.00.” Japanese characters for “reason” (ri or 理), “artificial” (zou or 造), “anti” (han or 反), and “existence” (you or 有) are embedded in the middle of its horizontal and vertical borders. To the left, a big “0” denotes its face value, and right in the middle, the Japanese character for “zero” (rei or 零) is followed by the Japanese character for “yen” (yen or 円). There is a final declarative imprint in black that reads “the real thing” (honmono or 本物).

When I flip over the paper, the artistic assertions continue in English: “THE REAL THING,” “JAPAN,” and “0 YEN” are boldly printed in block sans serif letters. In the center, there are side profile portraits of three white men in front of printing tools, representing the fathers of fifteenth-century Western modern printing: Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer. Where Fust and Gutenberg parted ways due to a dispute that resulted in litigation, the law also casts a lingering veil over this piece of paper and its artistic intent.

Japanese contemporary artist Genpei Akasegawa (1937–2014) created these offset lithograph editions of the Greater Japan Zero-Yen Note (Dai Nihon Rei-en Satsu or 大日本零円札) in 1967. This timing is significant, as Akasegawa had just appealed his criminal conviction, now art historically referred to as the Model 1,000-yen Note Incident. In that Japanese case, Akasegawa was tried and convicted for violating an arcane 1895 law that prohibited individuals from copying currency and fraudulently putting them into streams of commerce. To the court, it did not matter that Akasegawa had only reproduced in black and white one side of 1,000-yen notes already removed from circulation, using those large sheets in his artwork as wrapping for other objects. A portion of Akasegawa’s defense turned on whether artistic expression could face legal consequences, and, in doing so, questioned the definition of art and its meaning. During the case, Akasegawa’s contemporaries testified in the proceedings by presenting their own works, turning the courtroom into a veritable art exhibition, and perhaps even co-opting the trial into a piece of performance art.

Even as he appealed his criminal conviction up to the Japanese Supreme Court, Akasegawa continued his artistic practice, experimenting with the concomitant real-life effects his artwork could have. With his Zero-Yen Notes, Akasegawa referred to himself as the Zero-Yen Note Treasury (Rei-en Satsu Hakkoujo or 零円札発行所), announcing that he was issuing his Zero-Yen Notes in exchange for 100-yen notes. (In response to his call, 100-yen notes were, in fact, sent by mail to his home.) Fast forward to October 11, 2016, when one printed edition of the Zero-Yen Note realized a price of £27,500 at a Christie’s auction. Akasegawa’s print had posthumously achieved a financial price way above its proclaimed “face value” of zero yen, giving it an additional layer of “currency.”

In The Wonder of Money, a 2005 collection of short essays written and illustrated by Akasegawa, the artist looks back on his relationship with money, channels the inner child within him, and ponders the philosophical meaning of currency. In his essay “Bad Money Drives Out Good,” Akasegawa recalls a trip to Paris where he received a dirty bill, remembering how he was desperate to expel it from his wallet, wanting to use it before the other cleaner bills. He observed that money in France is a means by which to obtain goods that, in their usefulness, are somehow more precious than the physical bills themselves. In contrast, he remarks that in Japan, the currency itself is treated with greater care, evidenced by the Japanese character for bill (satsu or 札) being the same as the character for a protective talisman or amulet that one receives at a religious shrine.

In “Cash is Blood,” Akasegawa compares currency to blood. He first describes the fungibility of money issued by the state; any 1,000-yen note in valid circulation is worth the same 1,000-yen, regardless of which bill it is or who owns it. (We can compare this to the non-fungible tokens that took parts of the global economy by storm in 2021, as specific identifiable copies of digital art were given an aura of originality and bestowed economic value.) Yet, Akasegawa perceived that even if someone else has a fungible 1,000-yen note, there is, in fact, a temporarily non-fungible aspect to the ownership of currency: although the face value of a banknote is the same, the specific banknote you own is yours alone—just as other people’s banknotes are theirs alone. Once within the stream of commerce, however, what had up to that point been your banknote can be transferred to another person, and vice versa. Akasegawa draws from this logic to compare blood with currency; your blood is kept within you and usually sealed away from others, but sometimes, you can donate your blood in the way that you can donate money. Both money and blood are sources of life energy, as he uses the following shared adjectives to describe them: “raw” (namagusai or 生臭い) yet “blingy” (kagayaite iru or 輝いている), and “private” (puraibeto or プライベート) yet “collectively shared” (kyoyuu no mono or 共有のもの).

Turning back to Akasegawa’s Zero-Yen Note, what am I looking at? A portrait of a piece of currency? A satiric depiction of capitalism? An experiment in printing? A store of value (which, along with being a medium of exchange and a unit of account, is considered one of the three primary functions of money)? Throughout his practice, including through his various “direct action” happenings that he undertook as part of the art collective Hi-Red Center, Akasegawa interrogated the workings of contemporary society, and this editioned work is no different. Akasegawa’s investigation of the idea of currency had tangible effects for the artist (including a criminal conviction), reminding us that art does not exist outside of our everyday. Akasegawa’s intensely detailed practice of pictorially depicting currency—whether demonetized or imagined—so dangerously approximated the real thing that it posed the risk of taking on its function (and arguably even did). In doing so, Akasegawa reveals the fiction at the heart of contemporary civilization: rectangular bank notes and checks and circular metal coins, imprinted or stamped with elaborate flourishes, portraits of people, and natural and man-made icons representative of nation states and countries, have commercial value. That fiction is even more evident now, as tangible objects no longer need to physically change hands in contemporary economic transactions that rely on credit cards and digital accounts, including cryptocurrency.

Despite the prevalence of digital transactions, in July of this year, Japan issued new yen banknotes with technologically advanced 3D hologram technology to fight legitimate concerns around counterfeiting. Generating holograms of captains of industry and portraits of female empowerment, the holograms face different directions depending on the angle that the bill is viewed—apparently a first for paper money, according to Japan’s National Printing Bureau. (Akasegawa would undoubtedly have had thoughts about, and perhaps even an artistic response to, these new notes.)

Akasegawa’s Zero-Yen Note asks us to think about the social agreements that we each make regarding something we take for granted. To that end, his work is both conceptual artwork and also a cipher and clarion call to think about the world around us. Even as it self-declares its zero denomination as legal tender, it is, in fact, the real thing.