The is one of the

cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filin ...

-level ministries of the

Japanese government The Government of Japan consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and is based on popular sovereignty. The Government runs under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947. It is a unitary state, ...

. The ministry was named the until 2001. The Ministry is headed by the , who is a member of the Cabinet and is typically chosen from members of the Diet by the

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Overview

The Ministry originated in the 6th century, when the was established as a state treasury in ancient Japan. When a modern system of government was introduced after the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

, the was established as a government body in charge of public finance and monetary affairs. It is said that new ministry employees are subtly reminded that the Ōkura-shō predates by some 1269 years when the new Constitution was imposed on the nation by the U.S. occupation forces in 1947. The Ministry has long been regarded as the most powerful ministry in the

. After various financial scandals revealed in the 1990s, however, the Ministry lost its power over banking supervision to a newly established

Financial Services Agency The is a Japanese government agency and an integrated financial regulator responsible for overseeing banking, securities and exchange, and insurance sectors in order to ensure the stability of the financial system of Japan. The agency operates ...

. It also lost most of its control over monetary policy to the Bank of Japan when the Diet passed a new Bank of Japan Law in 1998. In addition, it lost its ancient Japanese name when it was renamed the in January 2001, although its English name remained the same. In financial markets, the Ministry is famous for its active foreign exchange policy. Its top civil servant on the international side, Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, is often quoted in the financial press. Former Vice Minister Eisuke Sakakibara was known as "Mr Yen", whereas his successors

Haruhiko Kuroda is a Japanese banker and a former Ministry of Finance government official. He serves as the 31st and current Governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ). He was formerly the President of the Asian Development Bank from 1 February 2005 to 18 March 2013. ...

and

Zenbei Mizoguchi was a Japanese scientist and optician. Biography He was born in Kaizuka, Osaka file:Kaizuka City Hall.jpg, 270px, Kaizuka CIty Hall is a Cities of Japan, city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 83,995 ...

were often referred to as "Mr. Asian Currency" and "Mr. Dollar", respectively.

Toshio Akagi Toshio is a common masculine Japanese given name. Possible writings Toshio can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: *敏夫, "agile, man" *敏男, "agile, man" *敏雄, "agile, male" *俊夫, "sagacious, man" *俊雄, "sagac ...

's wife performed the signature activity of a request for a re-investigation request to investigate the truth about the suicide of a staff member of Kinki Finance Bureau of the Ministry of Finance who was forced to tamper with official documents in relation to the Mori friend case, the fastest record ever in Japan The signatures of 260,000 people gathered, resulting in a total of 300,000 signatures.

Organizational structure

The Ministry is organized in six bureaus that provide the overall functions of the ministry: * Minister's Secretariat * Budget Bureau * Tax Bureau *

Customs and Tariff Bureau Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs ...

* Financial Bureau * International Bureau

Independent Administrative Institutions

Six

Independent Administrative Institution An Incorporated Administrative Agency (独立行政法人, ''Dokuritsu gyōsei hōjin'' or ''Dokugyo'' in abbreviation) is a type of legal corporation formulated by the Government of Japan under the Act on General Rules for Incorporated Administrat ...

s are under the Ministry's control: *

Japan Mint The is an Independent Administrative Institution of the Japanese government, responsible for producing and circulating the coins of Japan. The agency has its head office in Osaka with branches in Saitama and Hiroshima. The Japan Mint does no ...

* National Printing Bureau *National Research Institute of

Brewing Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer ...

*Nippon Automated Cargo Clearance System *Commemorative Organization for the Japan World Exposition '70 *Japan Housing Finance Agency

Incidents

*On May 20 2022, the deputy vice minister for policy planning and coordination in the Ministry of Finance was arrested for beating and kicking a fellow passenger on a train in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

References

* Hartcher. (1998) ''The Ministry: The Inside Story of Japan's Ministry of Finance.'' New York:

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

. .

External links

Official website
{{authority control

Finance Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

Anti-dumping authorities 2001 establishments in Japan Customs services