Tuesday's nomination of another former top Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Koji Tanami, for the Bank of Japan governorship shows the government continues to want someone with a background in the ministry at the post.
The government also nominated Kiyohiko Nishimura, a BOJ Policy Board member, as BOJ deputy governor. Nishimura, 54, was a University of Tokyo economics professor until he became a Policy Board member in April 2005.
It remains a mystery why the government is sticking to its guns when the Democratic Party of Japan voted down BOJ Deputy Gov. Toshiro Muto last week precisely because of his background at the Finance Ministry.