As Japan awaited wholesale assault on its homeland, citizens acquired gold - tangible asset, not mere paper. After devastation was wrought, those with gold went out in confidence to buy the bread they needed to survive. None had bread to sell; those who did either traded it for vast amounts of inedible gold, or did not trade it at all.
Those pieces of paper are a token of honor...
you correctly observe...gold may not buy that loaf of bread you need to feed your child either...
but the barter and exchange of “things” of honor and skill...
those things will ...