10,000 yen note
The 10,000 yen note (1万円紙幣 "1Man-en shihei") is the largest banknote denomination of the Japanese yen. The front side of the 10,000 yen note includes a portrait of Yukichi Fukuzawa, a Meiji era philosopher and the founder of Keio University. The back of the note shows a drawing of the Hōō (, Fenghuang) in the Hall of the Phoenix, Byōdō-in.
Foreign-exchange reserves
Historically, especially before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, central banks had rather meager reserves (by today's standards) and were therefore subject to the whims of the market, of which there was accusations of hot money manipulation, however Japan was the exception. In the case of Japan, forex reserves began their ascent a decade earlier, shortly after the Plaza Accord in 1985, and were primarily used as a tool to weaken the surging yen. This effectively granted the United States a massive loan as they were almost exclusively invested in US Treasuries, which assisted the US to engage the Soviet Union in an arms race which ended with the latter's bankruptcy, and at the same time, turned Japan into the world's largest creditor and the US the largest debtor, as well as swelled Japan's domestic debt (Japan sold its own currency to fund the buildup of dollar based assets). By end of 1980, foreign assets of Japan were about 13% of GDP but by the end of 1989 had reached an unprecedented 62%. After 1997, nations in Southeast and East Asia began their massive build-up of forex reserves, as their levels were deemed too low and susceptible to the whims of the market credit bubbles and busts. This build-up has major implications for today's developed world economy, by setting aside so much cash that was piled into US and European debt, investment had been crowded out, the developed world economy had effectively slowed to a crawl, giving birth to contemporary negative interest rates.