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These are halcyon days for Yasushi Mieno--well, about as halcyon as they're likely to get for the most controversial Bank of Japan governor in recent memory. At least the death threats have stopped, and few people compare him to Saddam Hussein anymore. In fact, Mieno has outlasted many of his most formidable foes, some of whom have fallen from power or been publicly disgraced. One is former Conservative Party kingpin Shin Kanemaru, the flinty "don" of Japanese politics who once, in a shocking breach of propriety, demanded the governor's head if he didn't lower the discount rate.
Now perhaps Mieno's ultimate vindication is at hand: Revived by government money, the Japanese economy has backed away from the abyss that many feared the central bank's tight-money regime would send it spiraling into. Leading indicators and share prices are springing back to life, inventories are finally declining and the money supply is showing sluggish growth.
Indeed, it's beginning to look as if Mieno will actually make it to the end of his five-year term in December 1994 without being ousted-which was rumored as recently as several months ago. And though mentioning Mieno's name in the back alleys of Tokyo's down-and-out financial community, which blames him for much of its travails, is still liable to provoke angry taunts, he has ensured his place in history.
Or at least popular mythology. The bespectacled, soft-spoken BoJ careerist is now dubbed "Onihei," after a legendary samurai avenger who imposed severe punishment on his victims. Whatever else he does, Mieno will always be known as the fierce bubble buster who forced Japan to sober up after its late-1980s speculative binge.
But at what cost? The persistence of Japan's recessionary hangover has many wondering, Was the cure worse than the disease? The man who by many accounts wanted to be the Paul Volcker of his country--a tough maverick focusing like a laser beam on inflation--finds himself open to criticism similar to that leveled at the U.S.'s Volcker: that in his monomaniacal maintenance of high interest rates, he may have delayed easing them for too long, causing serious damage to industry.
What was persistently portrayed by Mieno and other government officials (long after business stopped believing them) as a controlled deflation of the bubble...