Recruiting a Bank of Japan examiner as president — and four BOJ presidents after (1955)

What it means to bring someone in from outside

A bank founded in 1945 out of four banks in one prefecture, running 131 branches and leading every regional bank in Japan by deposits, began slipping from that first place after the strike of July 1953. For nearly two years up to the appointment, no settlement was chosen that would hand victory to either labour or management; instead the resolution was entrusted to Arikawa Gojiro, an examiner at the Bank of Japan and a man standing outside the quarrel. Rather than decide who won, the bank changed who decided.

That the practice of bringing someone in from outside then lasted four presidents and forty-five years, however, also means the bank did not for a long time recover the ability to produce a president from within. Under the labour accord of 1957 and three successive plans deposits grew from ¥68 billion to ¥317.3 billion, but those who stood on the receiving side of that fruit were presidents who had come from the central bank. Not until 2000 did Teramoto Kiyoshi rise from senior managing director to the presidency. Borrowing outside discipline in a crisis may be a choice that makes it hard to decide when the borrowing ends.