ABSTRACT
In 1946, with the approval of the U.S. occupation, a young Bank of Japan official named Hisato Ichimada was appointed BoJ governor. He had previously received an outstanding training in the intricacies of credit creation. Having spent time at the crucial Banking Department, which deals with the banks and supervises the extension of central bank credit, the BoJ sent him to Berlin, where, from 1923 to 1926, he witnessed Hjalmar Schacht's ascendancy to "credit dictator." He studied Schacht's credit control policies in detail and regarded Schacht and his highly independent Reichsbank as a role model for the Bank of Japan.! Ichimada was in many ways deeply impressed by the experience. "What left the strongest impression on me in Germany was central bank president Schacht," he informs us in his memoirs.2 Despite his young age, he personally became acquainted with the great credit dictator. The two seemed to get along well. After the war, when Ichimada had become BoJ governor, Schacht even visited his Japanese acquaintance (although Schacht could not stay long, as Ichimada lamented, since he was under investigation by the war crimes tribunal in Germany).3
