For a number of years, Masato Kanda had barely slept.
“Three hours an evening is a bit exaggerated,” he laughed throughout an interview with the BBC in Tokyo.
“I slept for 3 hours straight earlier than I used to be woken up, however then I went again to mattress, so in case you add them up, I acquired extra sleep.”
So why does the 59-year-old official have such a heavy schedule?
Till the top of July, he served as Japan’s deputy finance minister for worldwide affairs and the nation’s prime financial diplomat, or yen czar.
Key to that function is warding off foreign money market speculators who might set off turmoil in one of many world’s largest economies.
Traditionally, authorities have intervened to weaken the yen’s worth. A weaker yen advantages exporters akin to Toyota and Sony as a result of it makes items cheaper for abroad consumers.
However when Japanese yen plummets Throughout Mr Kanda’s tenure, this has elevated the price of importing important items akin to meals and gas, triggering a cost-of-living disaster in a rustic accustomed to seeing costs fall quite than rise.
Throughout his three years in workplace, the yen depreciated by greater than 45% towards the greenback.
To manage the yen’s decline, Mr. Kanda used about 25 trillion yen ($173 billion) to assist the yen, Japan’s first such intervention in practically 25 years.
Economist Jesper Koll mentioned: “The perspective of the Financial institution of Japan and the Ministry of Finance may be very clear. They won’t intervene at a particular foreign money degree, however will intervene when the market volatility is simply too excessive.”
Japan now finds itself on the U.S. Treasury Division’s watch checklist of potential foreign money manipulators.
However Mr. Kanda argued that what he was doing was not market manipulation.
“Markets ought to transfer primarily based on fundamentals, however generally they are often overly unstable as a result of hypothesis, and so they do not replicate fundamentals that do not change in a single day,” he mentioned.
“We intervene when it impacts peculiar shoppers who’ve to purchase meals or gas.”
Whereas international locations akin to the US and Britain can enhance the worth of their currencies by elevating rates of interest, Japan has been unable to afford borrowing prices as a result of a weak financial system for years.
Seijiro Takeshita, a professor at Shizuoka College, mentioned Japan has no selection however to intervene within the foreign money market.
“It isn’t the precise factor to do, however in my view it is the one factor they will do.”
Sarcastically, the yen has surged in worth in latest months however Mr Kanda or his successor have taken no motion. Financial institution of Japan raises rates of interest to shock marketsand The nation has a brand new prime minister.
So is the $170 billion measure to prop up the yen a waste of cash?
No, Mr. Kanda mentioned, noting that his intervention really resulted in income, though he confused that was by no means the aim.
Relating to whether or not his actions have been in the end profitable, he mentioned: “It isn’t for me to guage, however many individuals say that our change administration prevents extreme hypothesis.”
He added that the market or historians must be the ultimate choose.
Mr Kanda additionally expressed optimism about Japan’s prospects after many years of financial stagnation.
“We’re lastly seeing funding and wages rising, and we now have an opportunity to return to a standard market financial system,” he mentioned.
An much more shocking legacy for the “humble civil servant” is that he grew to become an web sensation after Japanese social media customers celebrated his means to shock monetary markets with a sequence of AI-generated dance movies. star.
