10 Francs Utamaro

Part of Monnaie de Paris's long-running series celebrating Japanese art, this issue honors Kitagawa Utamaro, the ukiyo-e master whose woodblock prints of women drew the attention — and eventually the wrath — of the Tokugawa shogunate. In 1804, Utamaro was arrested and sentenced to manacled imprisonment for producing prints depicting the wives of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a politically untouchable figure. He died within three years, broken by the experience.

France's formal fascination with Japonisme dates to the 1867 Paris Exposition, and Utamaro's work was central to how European collectors understood the genre.