Overview

• Ito died on September 20 after an illness, with his research laboratory confirming the news by September 24 and noting that the funeral was private.
• He was widely known for urging the adoption of explicit inflation or price-level targets, a stance that influenced Bank of Japan policy discussions.
• A Harvard-trained economist, he taught at Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tokyo before becoming a Columbia University professor in 2015.
• His public service included a 1999 stint as vice finance minister at the former Ministry of Finance, senior advisory work at the IMF’s Research Department, and membership on the government’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy from 2006.
• He was nominated for Bank of Japan vice governor in 2008 but failed to secure Diet approval and was later cited as a potential successor to former BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda.