With his harsh criticism of the Bank of Japan in the spotlight, Shinzo Abe's economic brain, Koichi Hamada, said it was a big step forward for the central bank to finally adopt the new prime minister's 2 percent inflation target last week.

"The (combined) effort by the government and the Bank of Japan (on Jan. 22) was certainly a substantial advance," Hamada told The Japan Times in a recent interview. "I'm glad that there was a strong . . . coordinated action between the government and the BOJ."

Hamada, 77, a professor emeritus of economics at Yale University, is a major adviser of the prime minister's "Abenomics" economic policies. Hamada has repeatedly blamed the BOJ for failing to pull the country out of nearly two decades of deflation, and even feels the BOJ Law should be amended to lessen the bank's independence.