A Bold Campaign To End Endaka

If anyone deserves celebrity status in the global currency markets these days, it's probably Eisuke Sakakibara. The head of international operations for Japan's Finance Ministry, Sakakibara is a brash economic nationalist. Now, he's using his clout in financial circles to shake up the ministry and pull Japan's economy out of its four-year slump.

Sakakibara's goal is simple yet daunting: Encourage trillion-dollar-a-day currency traders to buy dollars and sell yen, driving down the Japanese currency's value. The high yen hobbled Japan's export machine, thus aggravating Japan's deflationary spiral and pushing the country nearly into recession. So a more stable yen is critical to the country's growth (chart). To help achieve it, Sakakibara has been consulting regularly with U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and coordinating interventions in the currency markets by central banks.