BOJ needs to remove the straitjacket of its hard 2% inflation target

Masaaki Shirakawa is a distinguished guest professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and a former governor of the Bank of Japan.

The yen's depreciation over the past two years has been rapid and astonishing. It was only 13 years ago when the currency reached a historic peak of 75.32 to the U.S. dollar. The current rate, around 161 yen to the dollar, is the same as that recorded in December 1986.