Apr 28, 2013

App planned to help ID bank notes for blind

The Finance Ministry and the Bank of Japan plan to offer a free smartphone application that will allow the visually impaired to identify the value of bank notes through sound from November. The National Printing Bureau will initially develop the app for Apple Inc.’s ...

May 3, 2012

Ministry airs protest notes to Asahi

The Finance Ministry has made public protest letters it sent to The Asahi Shimbun newspaper over the daily’s April 5 report that looked into relations between key figures of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and senior ministry bureaucrats, saying the article has “many ...

| May 6, 2008

Finance Ministry losing its luster

by Shinichi Terada

The Finance Ministry has long been known as the most powerful and elitist of Japan’s bureaucracy. When Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda repeatedly tried in March to appoint a former vice finance minister as the new Bank of Japan governor — only to be rejected ...