In this corner of eastern Nepal, nestled between the world's highest mountains and the tea plantations of India's Darjeeling district, the scenery is spectacular, with rare orchids growing thickly and red pandas playing on the lush hillsides.
But life can be tough. Wild animals have destroyed the corn and potato crops of Pasang Sherpa, a farmer born near Mount Everest. He gave up on those plants more than a dozen years ago and resorted to growing a plant of little value: algeri, an evergreen, yellow-flowered shrub native to the Himalayas. Farmers cultivated it for fencing and firewood.
Sherpa never dreamed that the bark peeled from the Algieri tree would one day turn into pure money. It is the product of an extraordinary trade in which one of Asia's poorest regions supplies key materials to the economies of its richest regions.
Japanese currency is printed on special paper and is no longer available domestically. Sherpa and her neighbors have a lucrative reason to cling to the hillside, as the Japanese love their old yen notes and need a mountain of new yen notes this year.
“I never thought these raw materials would be exported to Japan, nor did I think this factory would make money,” Sherpa said. “I'm so happy right now. This success came out of nowhere and came from my garden.”
Headquartered 4,560 miles away in Osaka, Kanpou Incorporated produces paper used by the Japanese government for official purposes. One of his philanthropic programs at Campou has been conducting reconnaissance in the Himalayan foothills since the 1990s. I went there to help a local farmer dig a well. The agent finally found a solution to Japan's problem.
Mitsumata, the traditional paper used to print Japanese banknotes, was in short supply. This paper begins with wood pulp taken from plants in the genus family. This plant grows in highlands with moderate sunlight and good drainage, i.e. in tea producing areas. Declining rural populations and climate change have prompted Japanese farmers to abandon labor-intensive farmland.
The president of Kanpo at the time knew that Mitsumata originated in the Himalayas. So he thought, “Why not just port it?” After years of trial and error, the company discovered that a hardier relative, Algeri, was already growing wild in Nepal. Farmers needed the guidance they needed to meet Japan's strict standards.
After an earthquake destroyed much of Nepal in 2015, a quiet revolution began. Japan dispatched experts to the capital, Kathmandu, to help Nepali farmers get serious about making raw materials for cold, hard circles.
Eventually, the instructors left for the Ilam district. In the local Limbu language, “ilam'' means “winding road,'' and the road there will not disappoint. The road from the nearest airport is so rough that you'll need to change out of your first jeep midway, and then to a more rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle.
By then, Mr. Sherpa had already entered the business, cutting his own algaeli and boiling it in wooden boxes, producing 1.2 tons of usable bark a year.
The Japanese taught him how to steam the bark using plastic bundles and metal pipes instead. Then begins the arduous process of peeling, pounding, stretching and drying. The Japanese also instructed their Nepali suppliers to harvest each crop just three years after planting, before the bark turns red.
This year, Sherpa has hired 60 local Nepali people to help with the harvest, and is expecting a profit of 8 million Nepali rupees ($60,000). (The average annual income in Nepal is about $1,340, according to the World Bank.) Sherpa hopes to produce 20 of the 140 tons Nepal will ship to Japan.
That's most of the Mitsumata needed to print a yen, and enough to fill about seven cargo containers that wind their way downhill to the Indian port of Kolkata and then sail for 40 days to Osaka. Hari Gopal Shreshtha, general manager of Campou's Nepal division, oversees the transaction, inspecting and purchasing neatly tied bales in Kathmandu.
Shreshtha, who is fluent in Japanese, said, “As a Nepali, I am proud to be in control of the raw materials for printing the currency of a rich country like Japan. It is a great moment for me.”
This is also an important period for the yen. It is the third most traded currency in the world and is redesigned every 20 years. The current banknotes were first printed in 2004, and the new banknotes are expected to hit cash registers in July.
Japanese people love beautiful banknotes with elegant, understated designs made from moiré prints on durable off-white vegetable fibers rather than cotton or polymers.
The country's obsession with foreign currency makes it an outlier in East Asia. In Japan, less than 40% of payments are processed by card, code, or phone. In South Korea, this figure is about 94 percent. However, even in Japan, life is becoming more and more cashless. The value of currencies in circulation will probably peak in 2022.
Japan's central bank reassures yen holders that there are still enough banknotes in circulation. If all the banknotes were stacked in one place, the height would be 1,150 miles, or 491 times Mt. Fuji.
Nepali farmers like Sherpa were looking for a way to immigrate before finding the yen trade. Crop-hungry boars were just one problem. The lack of a decent job was fatal. Sherpa said he was prepared to sell his land in Ilam and emigrate, perhaps to work in the Persian Gulf.
A few years ago, Foud Bahadur Kaduka, now a 55-year-old satisfied farmer from Argheri, had a bitter experience as a laborer in the Gulf. He went to Bahrain in 2014 and was promised a job at a supply company, but he ended up working as a cleaner. Nevertheless, two of his sons went to work in Qatar.
Khadka says he is happy that “this new type of farming is somehow helping people earn both money and employment.” And he is hopeful that “if other countries also use Nepali produce to print their own currencies, the flow of Nepalese migration to the Gulf and India will stop.”
The warm feelings are mutual. Japan's current president, Tadashi Matsubara, said, “I want people to know how important Nepalis and Mitsumata are to the Japanese economy. To be honest, issuing the new banknotes would not have been possible without them.''
Noriko Notoya contributed a report from Tokyo.
