This Office has also acted as the go-between with the head office of the Bank of Japan in Tokyo, for which I thank it sincerely. While the Banque de France has been seconding a representative to the French Embassy in Tokyo since 1976, the Representative Office of the Bank of Japan was set up in Paris over 50 years ago. This Office is an extremely strong and precious link between our two institutions, which enjoy exceptionally good long-standing relations. The Banque de France is very attached to the presence of this Office in Paris and strives to provide it with assistance and information. This Office is also, I believe, for the Bank of Japan, a prime vantage point for observing the French economy and the Paris Financial Centre, naturally, as well as a particular vantage point for the euro area, which is highly complementary with that provided by its Office in Frankfurt. For these reasons the Bank of Japan has retained this representation in Paris, and we are extremely pleased that it has. In addition to this very strong institutional foundation of the relationship between the Banque de France and the Bank of Japan, you, Governor Fukui, bring an important personal dimension in the form of your personal attachment to our country. It should be pointed out that, in the early 1970s, you yourself worked in the Bank of Japan’s office in Paris.
M R Chatu Mongol Sonakul: National Central Bank and building world peace  Speech by Mr M R Chatu Mongol Sonakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the 27th International Conference on World Peace “Building a Culture of Peace in the New Millennium”, held in Bangkok on 1 December 2000. *  *  *  Members of the Professors World Peace Academy, Participants of the 27th International Conference on World Peace, Ladies and gentlemen. The history of central banking is normally agreed to have begun around four thousand years ago in the Greece, Roman and other empires up to the middle ages when banks were put up primarily for the purpose of getting finance for governments to wage war. So the first period of central banking cannot very well be said to have been in conformity with the topic I’ve been asked to talk about here today, which is entitled “National Central Bank and Building World Peace”. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and especially later on when industrialisation began in earnest, there were great needs for finance for the many various industries that sprang up around that time. Commercial banks and great finance houses became common but the limitations of the technology of that period of using precious metals as currency became quickly apparent. Commercial banks began issuing their own paper notes, for the amount of the valuable metals that they had in stock being much more transportable.