The Diet approved Makoto Sakurai as a Bank of Japan board member Wednesday, a move expected to strengthen Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda's support on the board.
Sakurai is an international finance researcher with ties to reflationalists such as Koichi Hamada, an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was confirmed by the Upper House on Wednesday and will take his seat starting at the April policy meeting, replacing Sayuri Shirai, who dissented in January and is the only woman currently on the board.
The decision means that Abe has appointed six of the board's nine members. It shores up support for Kuroda to continue with the current policy direction, after the introduction of a negative rate policy in January passed by a bare majority, and with inflation still nowhere near the bank's 2 percent target.