Under the direction of Haruhiko Kuroda and the Policy Board, every week dozens of Bank of Japan employees work to supply liquidity to the Japanese financial system to the tune of billions of yen.
This process — considered by some to be the largest monetary experiment in modern history — has continued unabated for five years with one single-minded goal: to break out of the deflation Japan has flirted with for the past two decades.
While experts are still deeply split over the merits of Kuroda's insistence on reaching 2 percent inflation by almost any means, there appears to be a consensus on at least one issue: his second term will be much tougher than the first. He is likely to be caught between the fear of side effects of his ultra-loose monetary policy and pressure from politicians to keep pumping stimulus into the still-fragile economy to provide ultra-low interest rates and more fiscal spending.