This paper investigates the modern reinterpretation of the Japanese pre-historic Empress Jingu through the lens of banknote designs.
Since an eighth-century historical account, Jingu was represented in hagiographic as well as vernacular narratives, paintings and sculptures. She was interpreted as a goddess, mother of the martial deity Hachiman, and as the alleged conqueror of the Korean kingdoms. These features turned her into the archetype of Japanese colonial aspirations. To choose Empress Jingu as a motif for the new and ubiquitous medium of paper money during the formative years of the Japanese nation-state was therefore a highly political and ideological decision.

The Japanese finance ministry ordered three different renderings of the empress to be designed between 1873 and 1881. However, none of her pre-modern characteristics appear overtly in any of the late nineteenth-century official, visual interpretations. Why would this be the case? What are the reasons for the shift from a narrative representation to an unfamiliar allegory, and finally to a bust portrait reminiscent of European regents? How could her Western-style image on the bills evoke her multi-faceted persona in the Japanese consumers?

The radically modern renderings of Empress Jingu, and the debates surrounding their creation reveal negotiations of historical, political, and aesthetic boundaries between ancient and modern; ideological notions and realpolitik; Japan and its mainland neighbours; art and everyday media; and the balancing of Japanese versus Western modes of visual representation.