(a) / 1969 / Paper printed on both sides / Private collection

Banknotes are printed material. What has been mass-produced in tens of thousands, in hundreds of thousands of exemplars without a single deviation, is precisely the authentic banknote. Genpei Akasegawa’s Model 1000-yen Note, which precisely exploited this ordinary mechanism of our times based on such an economic system of currency, was deemed to violate the Act on Control of Imitation of Currency and Securities, and Akasegawa was indicted in 1964, and held guilty by the Supreme Court in 1970. This item is a Real Zero-yen Note conceived by Akasegawa, and is a particularly appropriate piece of Conceptual Art. Nowadays, the Zero-yen Note is sold at high prices on the art market, which recognizes it as a work of art having a high historical value.