The Koizumi premiership: Haruhiko Kuroda (19)

I retired as a Ministry of Finance official in January 2003, after more than 35 and a half years of service. The reason I stayed on as vice minister of finance for international affairs for three and a half years, an unusually long term, seems to be that Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa decided to keep me on a bit longer, and my retirement was postponed by six months.

In March, I became a special adviser to the cabinet. The background to my assignment to the Prime Minister's Office was probably the discussions that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. The evening after the attack, I was called to a meeting of the Crisis Management Office that included Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda asked me if the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) should open the next day.