The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 8, February 17, 2002, Article 13

NO MONEY?  NO PROBLEM - USE YUFU

  From Time magazine's Asia edition comes this article from
  Yufuin, China:

  "Recession-ravaged residents of this tiny hot-springs town
  found a way to improve their standard of living. Stuck with
  low-paying and seasonal tourism-related jobs, Yufuin's
  citizens solved a chronic yen-flow problem by boosting the
  local monetary supply:  they print their own currency.

  In Yufuin you can get a taxi ride, buy a bottle of sake, eat
  lunch, book a train ticket and supplement your wardrobe
  using a self-generated scrip the townspeople call yufu.
  "The yen isn't very stable anyway, is it?" says Ryuji Urata,
  a 38-year-old liquor-store owner who came up with the
  scheme two years ago. "So instead of being subject to what
  the national government does, we have our own strong
  currency."

  "Strong" isn't the adjective that leaps to mind when one
  fingers the flimsy funny money. Roughly the size of a
  business card,  the yufu doesn't have pictures of Presidents;
  it doesn't come in denominations (although by local
  convention one yufu is equal to 100 yen, or 75 cents.)
  The only embellishment distinguishing a yufu from a Post-it
  note is a rendering of the mountains that surround the town
  of 12,000 people in Oita prefecture on Kyushu Island.

  Still, the scrip has value because villagers agree that it
  does. The system is a form of barter. Residents belong to
  a club with more than 100 members. Each offers a service
  provided in exchange for yufu. One woman teaches people
  how to wear kimonos.  An unemployed man gives haircuts.
  Several townsfolk sell rides in their cars. "In Japan, if you
  do this kind of favor for someone, people won't accept
  money," says Urata. "But they'll accept yufu."

  Barter allows villagers with little cash to trade labor for life's
  small necessities. When resident Tetsuro Yamamoto came
  down with a serious illness and had to be hospitalized last
  year, the group lavished yufu on him, which he used to pay
  part-timeworkers to assist his wife at their restaurant. "The
  government doesn't give me that kind of help," he says.
  "Yufu saved my life."

  The community's adventure in economics has inspired dozens
  of other towns across Japan to dabble in their own currencies.
  In other countries, barter clubs are frowned upon because
  they can be used as a glorified tax dodge?people don't have
  to report yufu revenue, for example, or pay Japan's national
  5% sales tax. (Yufuin itself doesn't have a local sales tax.)
  So far, tax authorities in Japan are looking the other way.
  "This kind of activity is not large enough to attract our
  attention," says Masaki Omura, a spokesman for the
  Ministry of Finance. Says Eisuke Sakakibara, the former
  Vice Finance Minister known as "Mr. Yen":  "There's no
  deep implication to this. If it helps strengthen solidarity in a
  local community, that's probably good.  In the end I think
  people want real money." Sometimes, though, the pretend
  money will do just fine."

  http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/changed_japan/yufu.html
  [Editor's note:  This item is somewhat similar to a story
  reported in the December 17, 2000 E-Sylum (v3n52):

  "Wealthy retired Italian law professor Giacinto Auriti began
  in July to circulate a private currency, called the "simec,"
  among citizens (and about 40 shopkeepers) in the town of
  Guardiagrele (about 125 miles from Rome), to "prove" his
  longstanding theory that any currency, if put in the hands of
  consumers instead of banks, yields more purchasing power."]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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