1000 Yen Minami-Tori-Shima

Minami-Tori-Shima — Japan's easternmost point, a coral atoll roughly 1,900 kilometers from the mainland — became strategically critical after surveys confirmed substantial rare-earth mineral deposits in the surrounding seabed sediments, published in a 2013 Nature paper. Japan's commemorative coin program has increasingly focused on remote territorial islands partly as an assertion of administrative jurisdiction, particularly as maritime boundary disputes with neighboring states intensified through the 2010s. This issue belongs to that broader series.